Hey it’s me Slick again, here with another exciting tale of
exercising. And away we go…
Last fall my sister and I decided to surprise my mom for her
birthday and join her on a girl’s weekend in Las Vegas. I am
not much of a gambler, something about knowing how many hours I have to work to
make X amount of money, takes the fun out of gambling. But we did go ziplining over Fremont
Street while a Bon Jovi concert played on the screen over our heads. And the day of her birthday we all put on our
hiking gear and went to enjoy the great outdoors at Red Rock Canyon.
Red Rock Canyon is a National Conservation area about 30
minutes from the Strip. Our first stop
was the Visitor’s center were we picked up an handy dandy hiking map that also
gave us the low-down on how strenuous the various trails are. Though everyone in the group hikes often, we
were not what you call serious athletes and no one wanted to face a 5 hour car
ride back to SoCal with a leg brace or cast.
We decided to pick three of the shorter trails. The first was “Calico 1”. I took most of my pictures on this
trail. I was just upset that my point
and shoot camera wasn’t going to capture the multitude of colors or do justice
to the formations.
Here is another picture from the same trail…my sister is
giving my poor mother a heart attack pretending to fall off.
For our second trail we decided on the Keystone Thrust. As we could never find the Thrust…and I only
have a vague idea of what a Thrust is or what it should look like, there are no
pictures. We gave up after a couple of
miles and decided to detour to the pictograph before the final trail.
The pictograph was right off the Willow Springs Loop, and an
easy two minute walk from our parking spot.
The waterfall, though supposedly an easy to moderate trail, was actually
a bit difficult to access…as there were lots of hikers (both serious hikers and
the flip flop variety) and a very narrow
trail at several points. But it was
worth it. My best picture is of my
sister under the water, but as I didn’t ask her, and my birthday is coming up
(she gives me the best gifts), I will refrain from posting it. And you all will have to settle for an
example what we climbed over in the “moderate trail” to get to the waterfall.
The next time I go to Vegas, I will definitely make time to
return and maybe tackle one of the strenuous trails, how bad could it be?!
