Valley of Fire

After a few hours driving (while everyone except the driver took a long nap) we stopped at a great place called Valley of Fire State Park. Awesome place! Nate and I have been once before when I was pregnant with Ty. It was good to be back and see this park.

We climbed the stairs to the top of Atlatl Rock....

...here we saw a bunch of petrolglyphs--not quite sure how to interpret them!

Papa even hiked to the top with a sore ankle--way to go Papa!

So my parents wanted to experience the "Nate & Erica road-trip adventure"! I don't think they knew what they were getting themselves into!! Ha! We are pretty intense, go, go, go and see it all! We took it easy on them though and only took them on one short hike!

The hike was fun--a little hot but we enjoyed seeing more petroglyphs and beautiful dessert flowers in bloom!

The kids loved hiking through the desert, playing in the sand, and climbing on all the rocks.

Caleb (or Kolob as we started calling him this trip because of our last stop at Kolob canyon) gets the brightest pink/red cheeks of anyone I know when he gets hot!

Ty's favorite thing was climbing in all the nooks and crannies he could find!

Nate spies with his little eye... a chuckwalla. Can you see this desert lizard on the rocks?! It looked like the chuckwalla just finished eating a large critter!

It's a good thing we put 'sum scream' (what Mara calls sun screen) on so we didn't get burned, Mara's cheeks look as pink as her shirt.

Mara also liked to find holes and caves like Ty!

Ty pretending to be a desert dinosaur in his hole!

And whatever Ty did--Mara wanted to do...

...and whatever Mara did--Caleb wanted to do!

It was a lot of fun having Mimi and Papa with us on the trip! They were good sports and glad
they would put up with us!!

Action shot! Check that out!

A really fun, fun place to explore and climb around!

I spy a T-Y- hiding in a rock!

This kid is lots of fun! He loved hiking through the canyon.

And Caleb wanted to do whatever Ty and Mara were doing--here he is trying to climb up the mountain like everyone else!

This hike was called Mouse's tank--a young Indian (name Mouse) hid at the end of the canyon near the water hole. When we got to the tank and saw the water hole Nate and Ty continued to climb up the mountain to discover what was beyond.

Ty's on top of the world!

Nate took Ty to the top of a small mountain to check it out--here we are at the bottom looking up at him.

I think this hike wore Ty out--he sure had a fun time hiking with his dad.

This petroglyph I know for sure: It's a family! Cute!

We stayed the night in Vegas at the Sam's Town Casino--it sure made the drive a lot better to break it up.

A few things I wanted to remember about this day:

• Listening to Jack Johnson's Curious George CD as we drove through the park.
• Trying to find Ty & Mara hiding in all the rocks!
• Drinking frozen slushy gatorade which tasted so good after our hot hike.
• Eating a quick dinner of pizza and KFC because we had to make a quick potty stop at the convient store and were all too hungry to go find a real restaurant-- it tasted great!
• Watching the light show at the casino and seeing the waterfall and fake animals--it kind of freaked the kids out but I thought it was cool.