Located only 3.5 hr from us and an hour from Las Vegas is Valley of Fire State Park. I remember driving through this when I was traveling with my dad in 2013 on our road trip to the Grand Canyon from Longmont, CO, but it was closed and we were not able to check it out! Aaron and I got to talking and decided to camp instead of staying at a hotel. We have been wanting to camp and buy gear, but we were talking with our friends Greg and Wendy, who own the side by side we post about, and they said, "Borrow our stuff!".
They practically insisted on us borrowing it, and little did we know that almost all of it was new! I guess we were their guinea pigs to test out their new gear and we are so thankful they let us! Hotels are about 20-30 minutes away from the park and it's only $10 to camp. We headed up there around 9 am our time, Nevada being 8 am. We enjoyed the drive up and seeing the Hoover Dam below us. North Shore road does require a fee, but if you have an All Access Pass it is included!
This drive takes you along Lake Mead and it is stunning!
Once you arrive at the Valley of Fire you will be entering at the East Entrance.
It is a $10 fee a the gate. One down fall about camping here is that no reservations are taken, it is first come first serve. It is about 5-10 minutes from the entrance to the campgrounds, so we ran up to the Elephant Rock which is a short walk from the gate.
Then we drove to the campsites. Our anxiety was high since we had just arrived there and it was past noon. The first campground had a sign saying it was full. We drove around to the campground on the other side of Atlatl Rock and saw a car in front of us get a spot, and next to them was one more. I dropped Aaron off there while I drove around to see if there were any other openings, we got the last one!! We put our $10 in the envelope and started unpacking!
The gear Greg and Wendy let us borrow was perfect for our little campsite! There is no plumbing at this campground (the other one has it), but there is an outhouse. Once we got our site set up and we made some sandwiches, we headed over to Atlatl Rock where we could check out some petroglyphs.
The stairs going up are not as bad as they look! Next we headed to the Beehives.
On our way to the Visitor Center, we saw big horn sheep!
At the Visitor Center we picked up some fire wood and went to Balancing Rock. Balancing Rock is a short walk from the Visitor Center and is not labeled on the map they give you at the gate, but it is easy to find.
Following that, we headed to Mouse's Tank which is only a 3/4 mile hike. At the end of the trail it gets narrow and a natural basin fills with water which you can see in one of the pictures below. It is amazing all the different colored rocks we could see in this short trail!
After Mouse's Tank, we went to Rainbow Vista were you can see multi-colored sandstone!
It is amazing how these rocks have purple in them!
The trail is about a mile in total and after we headed to Fire Canyon Road. At the end there was a couple getting wedding pictures taken and their limo driver was nice and offered to take a picture of us.
We headed back to our campsite after that to have dinner and start our campfire.
Once the sun went down, it was pretty chilly at the campsite, but our fire kept us warm during dinner.
We headed to bed around 8 pm since it was dark and we ran out of fire wood. Greg and Wendy let us borrow their propane space heater and wow, did that save our lives! It went down to the 30's that night and the sleeping bags they let us borrow were so warm we didn't realize how cold it was until we got outside of the tent. We got up early to see the sunrise and we were the only people out and about in the park! Fire Canyon Road looked like a great spot to eat our blueberry muffins and watch the sunrise.
We were going to go back and pack up camp, but then decided to go and finish the two hikes we wanted to do! To the White Domes we went!
White Domes is only a 1.25 mile loop, but it is all sand so just be careful.
The White Domes was a really cool hike with all the different colored rocks and how it narrows in the middle of the trail. After that we went to Fire Wave which is a much smaller version of The Wave in Arizona. Park at P3 and across the street is the trail!
You can see in one of the pictures, Aaron spotted a big horn sheep up on the mountain!
This trail is 1.5 miles and is marked, but towards the end where the wave is, it is not marked as well so it took us some time to find it! Afterwards, we went to one of the most popular look out points in the park, apparently it's popular on instagram. If you are driving out of the park, passing Rainbow Vista on the left, shortly after there is a pull off spot where you can climb up on a rock and take 'the picture'.
It was bitter sweet to go back and packed up camp since we had such a fun time! It was only 10 am when we left. We both agreed that White Domes was our favorite hike! You can easily do this entire park in 1 day if you started early and this park is great for any hiking level. We had such an amazing time and we have to owe it to Greg and Wendy for letting us borrow their camping gear since that really made our trip special!
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