Road Trip: Valley of Fire

When I first embarked on this road trip, I had all these fantasies of getting some great fashion shots with nature as my backdrop. And then as reality set in and I found myself living in t-shirts and jeans that could be easily rolled up in my tiny suitcase (not to mention the Madame Frankenstein hair), I realized that fashion pics would be few and far in between. When dusty shoes and perspiration-friendly tees became a daily uniform, my arm candy and Converse sneakers were the only signs of fashion on the road…

As you can see from the color of the rocks and ground, today we arrived at the aptly named Valley of Fire State Park, located in Nevada, just some 50 miles outside of Vegas.

The brilliant rock formations were shaped by movements and erosion of the local sandstone and sand dunes over a stretch of 150 million years.

Those visuals made me think of the landscape as a blood orange moonscape, and for a nanosecond I felt like a pioneer lost in time…in space…until signs of civilization showed up: a pinic area.

And just around it was a steep staircase leading to a preserved petroglyph site. The Valley’s prehistoric residents, the Anasazi,  left traces of  their occupation of this area through this form of rock art. But before I could see the art, I had to, once again, tackle my fear of heights.

My heart was pounding by the time I reached the top, but how else would I get to see all of this…

I guess sometimes you have to see fear as a ticket of admission. But let me tell you, I sure was glad to get back to the ground and begin our hike!

At the end of our hike, my teammates indulged me a few fashion pics (after seeing me take pics of my shoes all day, every day for a week now), only to point out the fact that they thought they saw a portrait of me on the rocks earlier per this interpretation of the petroglyph symbols (see pic of bat woman)!

I suspect their command of the English language has improved since being on this trip.

And then off we went, back to civilization and the bright lights of Vegas. We were starving and there was only one cure for that ailment on our collective minds: Shake Shack.

July 3, 2015