Red Rock Canyon March 9 &10 2009

On this years excursion to the VDTA in Vegas Grace and I did Red Rock Canyon which is just seventeen miles from Vegas but the drive there we never really was out of the city until just the last two miles. The area is very impressive and has a 13 mile scenic drive through the park which we did on Monday. The next day we decided to go back and forfeit a trip to the Grand Canyon to do the Skywalk because we heard it wasn’t such a good trip. I decided I wanted to make the climb up to the top of the huge sandstone deposit so we stopped at a Wal-Mart to buy a pair of hiking shoes and got to see a local argument between some Vegas natives for our fist adventure of the day. We then headed of to the canyon and stopped at a very colorful formation I am sure the area gets it’s namesake from. A sign said that this formation was at one time the largest deposit and sand in the world that later solidified into sand stone. This area is very popular with rock climbers and in fact I saw a group on my way down. The pictures you see do not do justice as to just how large this thing is but it was a very challenging trip to the top for me. Getting there involved a lot of route finding and backtracking and was sporting enough for me to be a real joy. About half way up I got a call from Oklahoma from Abby on my cell phone. Still amazes I the technology of the day allow such a thing yet I couldn’t get a hold of Grace who stayed at the bottom reading a book while I had my adventure. After an hour or so I reached the top and had amazing views for sure. You can see all the tall casinos of Vegas from here as seen in my self portrait at the top. The climb down was interesting as well and I took a different way to get to the bottom. My best guess was I did about two to three hundred feet of elevation in all. This area is desert and we saw many different plants and interesting terrain when we were here. We even got to get up close to some Pictographs left by the real natives to this area.