Since we wouldn’t be traveling home to the Midwest for Thanksgiving this year, my husband planned kind of a last-minute road trip to the Las Vegas area for some hiking and sightseeing. Our destinations were Valley of Fire State Park and Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

With the days being short on daylight this time of year and Vegas being a roughly eight-hour drive from Tahoe, we got up super early (4:00 a.m.) Thanksgiving morning so we could hit the road and make the most of the remaining daylight.

As we headed east on US Hwy 50 towards Silver Spring, NV, and dawn was beginning to break, the outside temperature reading sunk to just 10º F.

And as we watched the sun rise on the horizon before us, a beautiful albeit ominous layer of fog was illuminated.

And then we were in it.

In a few hours of driving through rural and often desolate Western Nevada, via US Hwy 50 to US Hwy 95 to Tonopah, NV, where we jumped on US Hwy 6 over to NV State Hwy 375, and just like that we were on the Extraterrestrial Highway once again.

Sometimes you come across strange things in this part of Nevada.

Five-hundred miles later, we finally arrived at the West Entrance of Valley of Fire State Park at a little after 1:00 p.m. Except that there were dozens of vehicles in line in front of us.

“Valley of Fire” became known as such in the 1920s, formally opening in 1934 and receiving legal designation in 1935, becoming Nevada’s first state park. During its first year of operation, 9,000 people visited. Today, it is Nevada’s most popular state park.

Located in the Mojave Desert, Valley of Fire is Nevada’s largest state park with 46,000 acres of red Aztec sandstone, formed by shifting sand dunes 150 million years ago.

In a slightly shorter amount of time (but what still felt long), we ended up waiting in line to get into the park for at least 45 minutes. The natives were getting restless and we saw numerous people exit their vehicles and start walking along the road. Some of them were quite the characters. I was confused about what these people were doing or where they were going. Maybe they were just out stretching their legs.

When we finally reached the kiosk to pay the day-use fee, the attendant told us that the visitor center was closing for the day in five minutes, and she advised that our best bet to maximize the remaining daylight would be to head straight to the Fire Wave, as that is the best of the best in the park.

So, we did just that.

The park was busy, but luckily, we found a spot to park along the road.

Valley of Fire isn’t truly a hiking destination, but it has numerous short hikes/walks available with spectacular sandstone landscapes.

Before we headed to Fire Wave, we fit in a short hike, exploring the slot canyons on White Domes Loop trail and then the unique rock formations in Pink/Pastel Canyon.

This was more of a walk than a traditional hike, but it felt great to get outside and move around a little bit, taking in the sights. Except that the majority of the trail was sand, which is one of my least favorite types of hiking terrain. But plenty of people were out on the trails and the road – more than we are used to seeing on our hikes.

Then we reached the slot canyon on White Domes Loop.

More interesting and colorful rock formations on White Domes Loop trail. The sandstone dates back to the Jurassic period and is the remnant of the sand left behind by the wind after inland seas subsided and the land rose. The red Aztec sandstone coexists with gray and tan limestone, which is left over from when the land was once covered by sea.

Another cool slot canyon on our route.

Then the canyon got a bit narrower. 😂

Coming out on the other side.

Then we crossed the road and continued our hike on the Pink/Pastel Canyon trail for more beautiful and colorful scenery.

We continued on the trail and found our way back to where we’d parked along the road.

Losing daylight quickly, we drove the winding, undulating road to the Fire Wave trailhead parking area. Then we made the short distance by foot over the sandstone terrain to the famous Fire Wave, which was crawling with people, so it was a little difficult to get photos without anyone in them, but we tried to combine patience with a little bit of creativity.

Then we hiked up and over above the Fire Wave formation to see what else there was to see before it got too dark.

We returned to the parking lot and headed out of the park and on to our hotel.

Once we left the park, it was about a 15-minute drive to our hotel in Moapa Valley, North Shore Inn at Lake Mead. Once we got checked in, we relaxed for a little bit, then got freshened up and changed into our “dinner attire” and hit the road again, but this time east to Mesquite near the border of Nevada and Arizona.

When we were planning this trip, I was a little concerned that we wouldn’t have any place to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. After doing some research online, the area isn’t exactly booming with restaurants, and the ones I was finding were closed on Thanksgiving. But then I discovered a casino in Mesquite (about a 40-minute drive) that had an upscale restaurant, Gregory’s Mesquite Grill, offering a traditional Thanksgiving dinner special. I called them the day before Thanksgiving and we were lucky enough to still be able to get a reservation.

I never quite know what to expect when going to a restaurant inside a casino, but I will say, Gregory’s was quite nice and it was completely closed off to the casino area, so it was quiet and smoke-free. And our Thanksgiving dinner was delicious.

That evening, we had a decision to make for the following day’s itinerary: Would we venture back into Valley of Fire, stop at the visitor center for souvenirs, and grab some early-morning sights in the park before it got busy, and then head to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in time for our 11:00 a.m. timed-entry reservation? Or would we simply leave Moapa Valley really early and head straight to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area before the timed-entry reservations started for the day? Red Rock Canyon was a little more than an hour’s drive away.

In the end, we got up early, got ready, got packed, and grabbed a quick breakfast in our hotel’s lobby area, and then went back to Valley of Fire for round two. Our first stop was the visitor center.

The parking area for the visitor center is kind of small, so as we were driving around trying to find a place to park, we noticed a few people standing around, one of whom was a guy with a camera and big telephoto lens. It turns out, our decision to come back that morning was a good and timely one.

We’ve always hoped we’d get a chance to see desert big-horn sheep on some of our hikes, but this was our first time seeing them up close like this. So far, we’d only seen big-horn sheep on mountain ridges from afar, so this was truly a treat. To survive the harsh desert climate, desert big-horn sheep can consume up to five gallons of water in one sitting.

After a sweep through the gift shop in the visitor center, we drove up Mouse’s Tank Road a few miles and took some more photos, taking advantage of having the park nearly to ourselves, unlike yesterday’s visit.

Then, it was back out on the interstate, bound for our next westbound destination: Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.