Some good friends passed through Las Vegas this past week and brought me on their crazy adventure tour around the city. They thought, as many folks do, that Vegas is this one thing but came to learn that it is much different than what you think if you are willing to get out of the city and into the wild. Las Vegas is an island city in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by vast stretches of desert in all directions. Within half an hour we can be out to Red Rock conservation area which has many hiking trails and is unfortunately swarming with tourists. But, its good that so many people are getting out and exploring, there's lots of room for everyone. Lots to see and do. My guests were floored by the beauty of the land and how many different adventures were within an hour or two of our home.
We spent a good day of hiking out at Red Rock, and another day we went out to tour Mount Charleston area. Colin and Desiree are horse people, so we were on the lookout for the elusive wild mustangs that roam the desert. That whole day out at Mt. Charleston was pretty magical. Colin likes to go off the beaten path, as does Desiree, as do I. And on our way down the mountain we kept passing these offroads leading off into the desert. Colin finally decided that THAT was the road we were gonna take, and off roadin' we went in the rental SUV! We drove til we couldn't drive no more, then we parked the truck and got out to walk. Up and up, to see what was over the hill. It turned out to be miles and miles of more hills and desert, so remote... so still... the joshua trees were all around us. Evidence of the wildlife in the area was everywhere but we saw nothing. Zuma, my adventure pom, was right on my heels the whole trip. What a dog! The rocks in that area are amazing. Here we were, 7000feet above sea level, and the ground was littered with fossils from an ancient seabed! My dad was the one who infected me with this nose-to-the-earth, always on the lookout for fossils but hardly ever finding any. Indeed, the geology of this area is an amazing story and the rocks are sooo interesting. The workings of Mother Nature's great cauldron and a wonderland for a nature geek like me.
Further along the highway I spotted them on a hillside, the mustangs! Three of them. We were able to stalk in quite close to them to get a really good look and some great photos. For Colin and Desiree, it was an incredible experience to see how the wild horses compared to their own horses back home. How they looked, how they moved over the rough terrain, their personalities. Its really cool that wild horses still exist here. We spent a good hour watching them, capturing a couple hundred photos. They weren't too put off by us being there, but of course Colin and Des knew how to move in unthreateningly so as not to spook them. The mom and the young one were edgy, and the old one didn't care at all.That really made our day, but had we known we'd find the motherload of the herd on the other side of the mountain, we might have spent less time there. We went up the Cold Creek road and there they were, probably 40 to 50 of them, spread out across the desert right to the base of the mountain. Wow! What a sight! We got out and roamed among them, they were a little twitchy and wouldn't let us get too close, but we still got another couple hundred photos. And what a collection of photos! A grey day, perfect lighting and a surreal landscape. There was a mare, a matriarch, who never moved from her spot close to the car (within earshot of yappy Zuma who was quite upset at being left out of this adventure), she just kept an eye on us the whole time. We were all quite a distance from one another, off on our own walkabouts when something amazing happened. Desiree had worn out the batteries on her camera (it was a pretty cold day) and put it away in her pocket and was just standing there watching when she heard the cloppity clop of hooves over rocks coming up behind her. Not knowing what the horse was up to, she stayed still as the mare came up beside her and nuzzled its nose in against her arm, took a few good whiffs up and down her sleeve, decided that Desiree was not a threat and casually strode along on her way. Too friggin' cool!
(I'll post more horse pics at the end of this post)There were wild horses all the way up to Cold Creek. One band of youngsters were hanging out by the road. Its obvious that people have been feeding these guys from their vehicles because they were pretty brazen about checking us out. One came right up and stuck his nose right in Desiree's window while another one circled the front of the truck and decided to bite into the hood to see what it was made of!
But the best adventure was our trip to Death Valley, California. Death Valley... I've always loved that name. It evokes a chill, especially when you're talking about one of the hottest places on the planet. It set out as a simple day trip, 2hours from home, seeking out a few ghost towns. There really wasn't much to speak of in the ghost towns, mostly all of the buildings having been reclaimed by time and the desert. Certainly not the old west ghost towns that Hollywood had imprinted on my brain. Rhyolite's train station was the only intact-condemned structure with no visible rail lines anywhere to be found. But the search got us into some remote areas. I don't think we knew exactly what we headed for when we entered Red Pass to find the second ghost town on our agenda, Leadfield, right dead in the middle of the Grapevine Mountain range.
We bombed across the open desert on a one-way lane with the tires rattling over the rocks and great clouds of dust billowing out behind us. We reached the small rise of the trailhead and the road narrowed and led us into a series of quick turns around thick vegetation and rocks, then a steep decent into the valley. Nature closed in all around us, and that's when it struck us, that we were going mountain climbing! The road was rough, a one-way pass not intended for cars. It was well maintained, grated regularly, and very intense. Climbing, decending, on the very edge of the mountain, every turn revealing a new and breathtaking vista of the valley. 
Up and up we went, the rented SUV spitting rocks out behind us, then down, down, into the valley below, only to climb again. We could see the roadway zigzagging up the up over the next series of mountains, and we marvelled at the rugged, twisting roadway.
Leadfield itself turned out to be nothing more than a group of small buildings like woodsheds in various states of disrepair. Those early settlers didn't last long here. Its so remote, it must have been so difficult. Desperate even. I mean, even now, that mine is a long friggin' way from anything that could have resembled civilization at the time. It was all for money, a wild goose chase for riches in mountains that all went down the tubes in three months.
The decent from Leadfield brought us through Titus Canyon, a mind boggling drive right through the very heart of the mountain itself. Humongous rock walls closed in tight around us as we decended through a very deep crevice which some ancient river had decided was its natural course and spend the next couple billion years carving out. It was amazing! The colors, the textures, around each and every corner a new angle to the mountain until the eyes and mind were boggled by the sensational imagery. The sun began to beam in the closer we got to the exit, but the canyon just kept closing in tighter and tighter until we thought it would never end. Finally we exited and were in the wide open desert again and then back onto the highway. That whole drive is something Tanya and I would have never done on our own, so we were glad to be along for that one.
That whole day in Death Valley was amazing. Further along the highway we came to Mesquite Flats sand dunes... I mean, REAL sand dunes, as high as buildings and stretching far out into the desert... like something you'd see in the Sahara. This is a place I need to go back to visit and spend some time walking around because those dunes are really cool! It is also on record as one of the hottest places on the planet. We didn't have time to explore the dunes fully. Red Pass had eaten up a lot of time, so we were on the clock to try and get in as much as possible before the sun went down.
Further along the highway we visited Painter's Palette, where the mountains are colored with intense reds, greens, pinks, and oranges. The greens were so intense, it really looked like it was painted on the hillside. From there we visited the Devils' Golf Course, which just blew my mind all over again. I'll try to describe this for you... if you know what an ice-jam looks like in the spring, all those chunks of ice pushed up together and the dirty water just underneath, this is what it reminded me of. It is a massive salt deposit with jagged chunks of salt are propped up out of the ground, solid as rock.
Our last stop was at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the western hemisphere at 282feet below sea level. Here again, the eye was tricked because in the fading light, it looked EXACTLY like a frozen, windswept New Brunswick winter. Salt swept, with a glass-like layer of salt underneath. It stretched out across the basin and you could smell the sea in the air.
With darkness setting in it was time to head home. We stopped on the desert highway to do some stargazing, and though it was a black night without any light whatsoever, I think there was a lot of airborne particles in the sky because it wasn't as spectacular as I'd hoped it would be. Definitely a wider sky, but not nearly as crystal clear as the black, densely populated star filled sky up home.
It was great to see Colin and Desiree again, and we thank them for being so adventurous and getting us out into the wilds to experience some of the wonders so close to home!
Here's some more pictures. Enjoy!
Thanks for reading.
TRJ
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