Into the Valley of Fire

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #10
Valley of Fire State Park - Sun, 16 Feb 2025, 10am

Another day in Las Vegas— Henderson, actually— another day we leave town to do stuff elsewhere. Today's elsewhere is Valley of Fire State Park. It's about an hour north of town.



We've been here a few times before. Most recently two years ago. We figured that's long enough ago that it's worth visiting again. The park's fiery red rocks, from which it gets its name, make it worth it.



Today we did get out earlier than yesterday. I was frustrated yesterday that we were futzing around in town until about 11am and only got out to the first trailhead by almost noon. I set a goal of rolling from the hotel this morning by 8.... We didn't make it, but we did leave by 8:20/8:25, which didn't suck. The point of it was to keep plenty of time for hiking today. Oh, and to get started before the park gets hella crowded on this holiday weekend when the temperatures are mild.



From the visitors center, where I took the selfie at the top of this journal entry, a road climbs up a mountain into the heart of the red rocks country here. Along this road are trailheads for two great hikes, the White Domes loop, and the iconic Fire Wave trail / Seven Wonders loop. We'll hike them both today then see what else we have time & energy for.

To be continued....

Another Easy Evening, Another Golden Corral Dinner

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #12
Back at the hotel - Sun, 16 Feb 2025, 8pm

Tonight is a lot like last night. We finished up fantastic hiking by 4pm, went for an early dinner at a Golden Corral buffet restaurant, and retired early to our room in a low-rise hotel very far off the Strip. Yes, today we ate at Golden Corral again. But it was a different Golden Corral restaurant. 😂 Hawk didn't like the one last night because they didn't have her favorite dinner dish— or her favorite dessert. The one we visited tonight had both. It also had more of a carnival atmosphere inside. (That's a bad thing, BTW. But we mostly ignored it.)

Also like last night I'm pushing this blog forward while letting several journals full of photos and videos from the hike(s) that need processing wait. At this point one— one— from yesterday is ready to publish. Another 5 are in the backlog behind this one. I'll work the backlog after we get back from our trip Monday night.

The one thing not like yesterday is where we went. I already posted in this morning's blog that we went to Valley of Fire State Park. There we hiked to the Fire Wave, probably the most famous spot in the park; continued the trail around in a loop through the Seven Wonders trail; and then hiked the White Domes loop.

We were spent after that and also red-rocked out. We skipped even drive-to spots elsewhere in the park, instead opting for a scenic drive home through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. It was over an hour of easy, country-highway type driving, through a combination of wide-open Mojave Desert vistas (basin-and-range geography, not flat desert) and occasional canyons and red rocks outcroppings.

Now we're back at the hotel, resting and unwinding from a busy day. And we've still got tomorrow's activities to plan. Our flight home isn't until 7:30pm, so we can plan a full day!

Hoover Dam, Mob Museum, Back from Vegas

Non-Vegas Vegas Weekend Travelog #15
Back home - Mon, 17 Feb 2025, 10:30pm

We're back home from Las Vegas. For me it's been just over a week away from home. I left midday Monday a week ago for two days of sales kickoff followed by, well, another two days of (technical) sales kickoff. Then Hawk joined me and we spent three days doing totally non-Vegas stuff in the area.

The trip home this evening was easy, like flying between Las Vegas and San Jose should be. The flights are scheduled at about 1.5 hours, and ours tonight was on time. See, Southwest? You can do it!

The only minor snags we had were airport related. At LAS there was a massive line for shuttle buses from the rental car center to the terminal. All I can imagine is that they had a bunch of drivers out unexpectedly or a bunch of buses broken. Or maybe some budget-conscious ops manager scheduled for "quiet Monday evening" oblivious to the fact it was a holiday Monday making it the end of a three-day weekend. Then, at SJC, our checked bag took forever to arrive on the belt. Again, that might have been some fool not staffing enough people to handle flights arriving full.

As for what we did today in Las Vegas, we did two things. First we drove out to the Hoover Dam for a dam tour. It was... dam good. 😂 The tour guides all had fun cracking dam jokes, including asking us if we knew about the picture-taking policy.... "There is no dam policy!" they laughed. "So take all the dam pictures you want!" I'll have some of those pictures coming when I work my blog backlog this week.

The second thing we did today was tour the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. We've been meaning to go there the last few times we were in Vegas but never had the right opportunity. Today we made time for it. It was... not as revealing as I hoped it might be. It's mostly about the "golden age" of organized crime in the 1920s through 1950s. The reality of organized crime in the 21st century was tacked on as an afterthought in one display in the last room before the gift shop.