Valley of Fire NV State Park near Overton, NV - Day 1

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

As we drove to Valley of Fire, we crossed this bridge while we were still in AZ. 

We exited the interstate and entered into Lake Mead National Recreation Area.
 

Here you can still see a small part of the northern portion of Lake Mead which is in the desert just outside Las Vegas.  Valley of Fire is only about 10 miles from this point.

This is our camp site for the next 2 nights at Valley of Fire.


This post is of day 1 excursions.  There are so many interesting rock formations and different lizards, I'm just going to show the pictures unless I've got specific comments.  

Tic thought these rocks looked like the flames of a fire reaching to the sky.

 This fellow was very inquisitive.  He stayed there a long while.  His plump tommy looks like he is eating well.  😊

This rock mound was once a dwelling for local Indians.  The stairs lead up to a wall of petroglyphs.  Below is just a portion of that wall.

Above is looking between some of the boulders on the way up to the top of the stairs.  Below shows some swirls and layers of sediment on the left side rock above.

 This is Arch Rock which was within walking distance of our campsite.  There are many openings in the soft sandstone as you will see in some of the following pictures.

 There were several mounds like this one and they were named the Beehives.  Interesting how the wind and rains formed the sandstone.

 I took Tic standing at the base of this huge boulder for perspective as to its size.  He's in the middle bottom.  See him?

This dark formation was probably limestone.  There were so many colors throughout the rock formations.

So many different types of rock and varying formations.  It has been a fun day of looking around.  We haven't seen all we want to see yet, so there will be more pictures for day 2.