Scouting the Valley of Fire

Forty-five minutes northeast of the van manufacturer Noovo, which is to say forty-five minutes northeast of Las Vegas, is the primordial Valley of Fire. It’s a state park, and a small one, but–my god–if you haven’t been here, I can tell you that even these pictures don’t do it justice.

On the way to Albuquerque, we stopped by Noovo HQ to finalize the interior color of our van–we had visited factory before but wanted one last look before locking in our color choice–and then drove up to spend the rest of the day at Valley of Fire. (Btw, we chose the “Walnut and Sage” interior.)

The iPhone’s map sends you off to enter the park from the wrong direction. The entrance you want is just off I-15–there will be signs–follow them and ignore your phone.

We did two of the trails, or at least a combination of trails, jumping from one to the other. Both of the trails, White Domes Loop and Fire Wave/Seven Wonders, are at the end of White Domes Road, the dead-end road that juts north within the park. Note that the Fire Wave/Seven Wonders trail is close during the summer. It gets extraordinarily hot during those months and, back when the trials used to be open, people were going in unprepared–with the usual results.

More than once we joked, “If we had the Noovo…”, meaning we could have had a selection of cold drinks waiting for us at the parking lot or a snack or even a nap. But we were mostly joking–and scouting. We checked out the facilities, drove through the campgrounds. We hoped to luck into a usually sold-out camping spot for the days after we picked up the van, and, sure enough, when I checked, there had been a cancellation and we were scheduled for mid-April.