If you head to the Las Vegas area and you don’t want to visit the Strip, you find other things to do. Several landscape photography opportunities come to mind, including the Valley of Fire State Park. A lot of folks don’t make the trek out that way, because it’s a good 45 minute drive on I-15 from the Strip. Despite, it being about a 40 mile drive from our spot at Lake Mead, it was a much easier and peaceful drive because most of the drive is on national recreation land roads.
Valley of Fire is a Nevada State Park, so it does require a $10 entrance fee – you can’t use your annual pass, even though it is right next to the national recreation area.
We came in from the Elephant Rock entrance, but drove to the other side of the park so we’d end up exiting the direction we needed to head to back to Lake Mead.
When we first got there, the clouds were clearing up a bit and blue skies were peeking through.
As we drove further down the road, we could see that the clouds were starting to come our way and get a little darker.
I saw this view and if I could have stopped in the middle of the road, I would have.
We finally got back to Elephant Rock, where we were expecting to spend a bit of time (including sunset), but I finally got cel phone reception, and it was clear that the clouds were bearing down on the state park really fast. My radar app showed a fast moving storm, so I snagged some dramatic cloud photos.
The good thing is that we can always go back and spend more time at Valley of Fire State Park. I’d really like to check out Elephant Rock and be there for sunset. We may not get back for a year or two, but we’ll be back!
