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Pink Jeep tours are popular in  Neveda . This scene is at Valley of Fire State Park about one hour from Las Vegas.

Story and photos by Bob Lindsey

A visit to the dessert and Las Vegas wouldn’t be complete unless you  make a journey out-of-town to see some of the wonders of the American West. We’ve visited Grand Canyon West, Red Rock Canyon, Mt. Charleston and Hoover Dam in years past. Each was less than hour from Las Vegas, except  for the Skywalk at Grand Canyon West,  about 2 hours away.

This trip we opted for The Valley of Fire, another location about one hour from the city. But instead of renting a car, we hooked up with the famous Pink Jeep Tours for an escorted trip to this desert wonderland.

With a guide named John Hancock, how could you go wrong?  John picked us up at our hotel in one of the fleet’s 10-passenger over-the road “tour trakkers,” made sure we had plenty of water for the 95 degrees heat and told us about what we were going to see at the Valley of Fire.

Valley of Fire was Nevada’s first state park, but it could easily be a National Park as for as its size, beauty and terrain. The colors are similar to some other areas in these parts with red and pink hues, (from iron in the hills) and petrified sand dunes created by millions of years of wind, sand and water.  There are few trees and plenty of cactus and other desert plants you find in the Mojave Desert, which has the least amount of rainfall in the U.S. You might spot a roadrunner, lizard or snakes. Rattlers are found in these parts, but luckily we missed them on this trip.

While we rode through the park in the air-conditioned Dodge vehicle, John stopped at many locations on the six-hour adventure including the visitor’s center and some half-mile treks through the rocks.  The rocks contain gypsum, quartz, sandstone, and limestone and conglomerate (called desert varnish).

We took another short walk to Silica Dome, which had many sandstone formations that you’ll find throughout the Valley of Fire. The colors change from white in the base of the dome to red where iron produces a stain. We stopped to see where a few movies were filmed such as The Professionals with Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster and Jack Palance and where a couple of episodes of Star Trek were filmed.

Another stop was at the White Domes, an area that looked like the Painted Desert in Arizona. Nearby were some cabins originally built in the 1930s, but very primitive and no longer in use. In this area, there’s also a staircase you can climb to view the oldest petroglyphs in the park.

Pink Jeeps offers tours to Mt. Charleston, Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West and Red Rock Canyon. They also operate in Sedona, Arizona, and will soon offer the first every escorted tour into Death Valley. “We are looking forward to bringing people into this remote region,” said Hancock. “Nobody’s done this before.”  One of the main reasons was the heat, but when you’re riding in an air-conditioned vehicle with plenty of cold bottled-water to keep hydrated, we could see how Death Valley tours would succeed.

Our guide told us the owners of Pink Jeep Tours wanted to have the vehicles painted another color that the usual green or black, so they came up with a dark pink. To learn more about Pink Jeep Tours from Las Vegas, visit: www/pinkjeep.com,

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