Valley of Fire, March 12, 2019
I went on a bus tour of the Valley of Fire, the first state park in Nevada, and had an amazing time. We had an experienced and enthusiastic tour guide, Sally, who made our trip enjoyable. On the way to the Valley of Fire, she explained that she moved to Las Vegas in 1966 from England and has dual citizenship. On a recent solo car trip from Las Vegas starting at 6:00 a.m. to Los Angeles, she decided to count the number of 18-wheelers going into Las Vegas, and counted over 900! It was visual proof that just about everything is brought in from somewhere else. She said that most people assume that palm trees naturally grow in the Las Vegas Valley, but they are in fact brought in from California or Arizona at a cost of about $5,000 each. Casinos along Las Vegas Boulevard paid over $11 million to have palm trees planted along the Strip.
We learned that Las Vegas has pig and shrimp farms. Las Vegas leads the nation in shrimp consumption and its residents and visitors consume 22 million pounds annually.
Sally likes the Paiute Indian tribes because they respect their women for keeping their civilization going. They are a gentle people who have an enormous amount of knowledge about the medicinal value of desert plants.
After we entered the park, we saw erosion and the effects of wind, rain, and violent weather over millions of years that have produced unusual sandstone formations and beautiful colors. We stopped for photo ops at the Beehives, Elephant Rock, Seven Sisters, and Mouse’s Tank. We saw ancient petroglyphs. At the Visitor’s Center, I snapped a picture of a petrified log.
Sally pointed out the creosote bushes that can keep neighboring bushes stunted by using their highly effective root system to draw water for their own survival. She pointed out galls in trees, black round balls that are home to ants. We learned that mistletoe plants kill their host trees and saw many examples.
As we ate lunch, two desert squirrels scurried alongside our picnic area, and two ravens eyed our food from the top of a large rock. We didn’t see any tortoises, but Sally admonished us not to pick them up and move them across the road because they will be traumatized and disoriented. Their defense mechanism will kick in and release the contents of their bladder and possibly cause them to die in drought conditions.
Sally pointed out the mountain area which shields Area 51, its existence long denied by the government. She told us that employees drive their cars to work, but higher level personnel are flown in by Janet airlines in unbranded planes that are white with a red stripe. She told us that Janet unofficially means “Just Another Non Existent Terminal.”
We witnessed magical and alien terrain, the power of nature, and beautiful and unique formations millions of years in the making. It was cloudy most of the day, but blue skies appeared toward the end of our tour. Sally and her competent driver brought the sunshine with them and gave us a spectacular day.