Something Old, Something New

Yesterday we went geocaching. Nothing new. We explored a national conservancy area that we'd never been to before. Do that all the time.

What was new for us was meeting a fellow blogger in person. Way cool.

Kim contacted me after one of my blog entries and said she'd love to meet up with us somewhere so after an e-mail and a phone call we decided a picnic at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation area would be a great place for a meet. Denny and I had never been there and Kim is well familiar with the park. Plus it would allow us to meet Luna, too.



This is Kim and Luna. Perhaps Kim is more familiar as Soulknitting. Luna, of course, is the Perfect Puppy Dog.



There are many, many geocaches in the general area of Red Rock Canyon and nearby Mt. Charleston, but I only picked a couple easy ones so we could introduce Kim to the hobby? sport? of geocaching. Here she discovers her first cache after some scrambling around on the sandstone formations near the old quarry area of the park.




Here we are at the highest point in the park, elevation 4500+ feet. This is a terrific area for pictures and just to sit and look out at the desert and far away mountains and daydream.



There's a wonderful little picnic area with trees and a nearby creek at the Lost Creek parking area. That's where we discovered this little guy, which Kim accurately identified as a chukar. Which I thought was a polo term (heh) not a bird. Kim had him eating out of her hand before we sat down for our picnic.



It's pretty obvious from this photo why the area is called Red Rock Canyon. There is a small visitor center near the entrance to the park (and it's free for Golden Age/Golden Eagle pass holders) and then you follow the 13 mile scenic driving loop to explore the park. The park has numerous hiking trails (we passed because of my currently gimpy knees) that are marked with the length of the trail as well as the difficulty. This is a beautiful area and I'm sure we'll return to do more exploring when we come back to the Pahrump/Las Vegas area.

If you are visiting Las Vegas this would be a nice day trip because it's only about 20 miles from the city. But it's also a world away. Come see.