Leaving California, On to Nevada

 After sadly leaving the coast behind, a long day’s drive got us to Mojave National Preserve on the eastern border of California. We turned off the highway onto the road into the preserve just as the light was starting to fade from the sky. Unsure whether the campground was full and not wanting to find dispursed camping in the full dark, we found a smaller dirt track that led to a wide spot that had obviously been used for camping before. 

Arriving at Mojave National Preserve

 

The desert view from our campsite in the morning

Silver cholla cactus blooms

The night was incredibly dark and gave Tom his first chance to use his new toy, a UV flashlight, to look for scorpions. Although there were no scorpions, it turned out that the thousands of bugs we barreled into on the highway also glowed in UV light, and the front of the RV looked like the Milky Way.

Mojave mound cactus

Cholla skeleton

Chuckwalla

The next morning we took a walk down our little dirt road, and found that spring had come to the desert. What is a dusty and dry-looking landscape most of the year had exploded with red, pink, yellow, purple, white, and every shade of green imaginable. After exploring the area around the visitor center, we set off up the road that leads north through the preserve, keeping a watchful eye out for desert tortoises.

Rollercoaster road leaving Mojave

Our next destination was Zion, and we headed for a campground along Lake Mead to break up the drive. To get to it, we had to pass the Valley of Fire State Park, and out of curiosity decided to look it over. There are two campgrounds at Valley of Fire, Atlatl Rock and Arch Rock. Atlatl Rock is the larger of the two, and is open year-round. It was full of large RVs, so we bypassed it for the smaller Arch Rock Campground, which had recently opened for the season. It’s surrounded by a bowl of red rock and feels very cozy. We liked the look of the park and were lucky to get a spot; within a couple of hours it was completely full.

Firewave Formation

We toured a bit of the park in the afternoon, and were surprised by the variation in rock formations in a relatively small area. The colors range from white to deep purple, with a lot of banding in some areas, like the Firewave Formation. By the time we got back to our campsite we had decided to spend a second night so that we could spend the next day checking out more of the trails.

The evening was a perfect temperature for sitting outside, and there was a light breeze as we relaxed and watched the moon rise over the red rock walls. The campground was quiet except for one of our neighbors who had brought a sound machine (?!) that sounded like a leaky gutter on a rainy night. How that would put anyone to sleep instead of sending them running for the bathroom every five minutes is beyond me, and we were relieved when it was finally shut off.

The moon was so bright it washed out all but the brightest stars

The next day we stopped at the visitor center, where they had bird feeders that were getting a lot of activity. The hummingbird feeders were especially entertaining, and drew a big crowd to watch the hummers zoom in and out, challenging each other for spots at the feeders.

Male and female Costa's hummingbirds

Another day of hiking mostly deserted trails left us very happy to have stumbled across Valley of Fire, and surprised that a park so close to Las Vegas was relatively empty.