Our last day in Vegas landed on a Thursday. Adam had meetings at Summit until 3pm but our condo required that we check out at 10am which meant that the kids and Mumsie and I had 5 hours to kill before we could start heading home. We ended up deciding to spend the day at Red Rock National Park. It was only a 25 minute drive from Vegas and was a park I had been wanting to explore more since I’d only been there once and very briefly. So that became our activity of the day.
We were able to pack up our trailer and van with Adam’s help that morning and then got permission from Wyndam to leave the trailer for the 5 hours we would be gone. They were great about it and even told us we could hang out and enjoy the facilities if we wanted to. Cool! But since we already had our day to Red Rock planned, we politely declined.
It was a beautiful drive into the park and we loved that we could use our National Parks pass to get in! Nice. We decided to keep the day pretty low key though and opted to just do one or two very short hikes. The park ranger recommended the Willow Springs area as being a great place for a kids hike so that is where we went. We loved taking the scenic drive through the park though and stopping for pictures along the way.
Once at Willow Springs though we realized that our grand plans of a few hikes might be thwarted because the weather had turned terribly cold and windy! Not sure if it was because we were higher up in the mountains or because a cold front came through, but our expected nice weather was anything but! We ended up just bundling up the best we could and going on one very short hike to see some petroglyphs and then decided to forgo doing another hike. We did hang out in the picnic area for a while though and eat some snacks and then let the kids climb on the rocks for a bit.
See the petroglyphs above Harry’s head on the dark brown rock?
We couldn’t tell what this was. Maybe a painting of some sort? Or just fire soot? In any case I thought it looked like a creepy man and Mumsie thought it looked like a Mamma carrying a papoose! ha! Now looking at it closer I think it looks like a man holding onto a sphere of sorts.
Not sure what Brans is doing in this picture, but I’m glad he has Mumsie to comfort him. 😉
The trail was a little tricksy in parts so I asked Brans if he could help Mumsie. I had Jamis on my back so I was pretty unsteady myself and we hadn’t thought to bring our walking sticks.
We ended up claiming a table in the picnic area and pulling out some nutty bars, nuts, and fruit to snack on.
Mumsie and I both loved these flowering bushes/trees all over.
We let the kids climb on the rocks to get their wiggles out for awhile. They always love exploring.
I left Jamis with Mumsie and climbed up with them.
Then after a nice little break we hit the road again and drove the remainder of the scenic loop.
Once out of the park we were thrilled to see a wild Burro off the side of the road. He was pretty friendly and walked along the road for some time so we could look at him.
We ended up taking a different way home so we could see more of these awesome mountains.
We then stopped for gas on our way back to Vegas and Mumsie treated us all to lunch at Mcdonalds. It was sure a fun way to kill a few hours of time and we loved being out in the mountains even if it was a little cold. Love these adventures with the kids and Mum!