Red Rock Canyon

We’ve been eating out a good deal – mostly because I’m working from the apartment and it’s a chance for me to leave the complex.  We had breakfast at home this morning – which was a nice change of pace. 

I had been studying the “Harley map” yesterday afternoon, so when Tom asked what I wanted to do today, I knew!  I said, “Let’s go to Red Rock Canyon.  It’s a short drive, it will get us out of the city, and closer to the mountains.  And, we can do it before we have dinner with Phil and Mary.” 

The weather was GREAT, too--sunny and warm-ish.  (Hey, it’s January, and we’re Minnesotans.  Anything over 40 is warm!)  We stopped at the sign for our first photo op.  Tom calls this one “Mr and Mrs Hollywood.”

We decided to stop at the overlook before going into the park.  I love the historical information at these overlooks.  And, today, I learned about the “Old Spanish Trail,” which spanned 150 miles in Nevada.  The sign told us that the artesian springs at Las Vegas made it one of the most dependable stops on the journey through the desert.  As we looked out over the valley, Tom and I wondered how worried cowboys on horseback and pioneers with wagons were about water in the desert.

At the Visitor Center, we heard a ranger telling another couple about a place to see petroglyphs and pictographs, and decided that was the trail for us!  Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought my hiking shoes and was wearing only sandals, so we didn’t get very far before we thought it wise to turn around.  So…  the petroglyphs and pictographs will need to wait for another time.  This might work to our advantage, because we read that Mojave Max, the tortoise who lives in the canyon, would be emerging from hibernation before we head back to Minneapolis, and we thought we’d go back in late February or early March to see if Max would be out and about.