Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada-Part 2

Our second day in the Valley of Fire started at sunrise. I had read about a place in the park called pink canyon. The photos looked pretty cool, so we decided to head there first thing. The problem we had though, was there wasn’t much sunlight in the little slot canyon, so photography was difficult. But oh my….what a beautiful little place this was. Pink canyon is totally the right name.

The layers of color and all the textures, it was so amazing.

We climbed out of the canyon, to see what else was in the area, and get into better lighting.

Pinks, purples, reds, yellow and white. This section of Valley of Fire is like a rainbow in the rock.

These formations were super interesting. They were like sections of vertical stone sticking up out of the sandstone.

I can’t tell you how many times I thought we were in a land that Dr. Seuss created. This is striped rock. For good reason too.

Wandering around this magical landscape, there was a surprise, and something different every time you turned around.

After hiking in this area for a while, we drove to another trail called Mouse tanks. I had read there were petroglyphs here, which I always love.

This was a wider slot canyon with sheer faces on the east side. That’s where all the petroglyphs were.

There are several locations in the canyon with petroglyphs, and you just have to be watchful for them.

I loved this window view.

Another interesting formation in the canyon.

We had left the dogs home that morning, so after our short walk in this canyon we headed home.

That evening we grabbed a picnic, and the dogs and went back to hike to the fire wave formation.

Again, it was beauty everywhere you looked. This was a nice little hike, less than a mile to the fire wave, and easy walking.

The fire wave formation was pretty neat, and you can’t help but think of all the millions of years it takes to weather something like this.

While we were there, a couple of bighorn sheep came cruising through. This was on my wish list, to see them in the red rock.

I didn’t see it when I took this photo, but look in the top left and there is another sheep standing on the ridge.

This was a pretty interesting backdrop for this one. I only wish there had been some sun. But, I know that photographers of wildlife can’t be too picky.

After the hike, we stopped, had our picnic, and watched the sun go down. As we were driving out of the park, I noticed this family of bighorn sheep way high up on a ridge. The moon provided the perfect accent to this photo. As I was photographing them, one of the adults lied down. We had seen another group high on a ridge were we had our picnic, and I’m pretty sure they spend the night high up these cliff walls for safety.

It was the perfect ending to a beautiful day.