The Valley is on Fire...

Okay, maybe not on fire, but the rocks are awfully red!

The Valley of Fire is a state park about 50 miles outside of Las Vegas. It gets its name because of the incredibly vibrant red sandstone formations. We took a drive out that way over Thanksgiving weekend with Cari's parents who are visiting from Wisconsin...



It's hard to get a sense of the magnitude of the valley or the redness of the stone, so here's the same pose taken from afar...



These sandstone formations are 150 million years old and have been weathered by water and wind over the centuries. This makes for the most unusual cracks, crevices and hollowed out tunnels.

The kids had an absolute blast climbing in and out of them...



There even was a great cavern that you entered by crawling through a small hole in the sandstone from below...



Needless to say, I didn't quite fit through the hole!

And backing up the camera a bit, you can see what a crawl it really is...



The kids and their Grandpa climbed all over the place...



With David demonstrating his climbing ability...



Of course, our littlest one, Malia, is too fearless to be left behind by her brother David...



And if Malia was brave enough, her older sister Nalani was going to join her...



The red sandstone formations are really quite incredible...



Of course, sandstone is just sand that was compressed into stone over millions of years. With enough wind and rain, that stone can easily turn back into sand...



It was like a beach out there! Everyone came home with their shoes filled with sand.

There are also some terrific white sandstone formations, some of which create deep crevices and valleys of their own...



If you look closely at the middle of the picture above, you'll see Cari, her Dad and five of our six kids halfway down the trail to the bottom of this little valley.

Here they are zoomed in...



It may not look like a climb from the pictures, but it really is a bit of a trek. Here we are at the bottom...



While the trail is quite steep, thankfully it's very easy and steps have been carved in to much of the sandstone. And of course Malia just had to climb it herself...



Well, at least halfway up.

Guess who had to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way up this very steep trail?

My back is still sore!