Day four – the Valley of Fire Visitor Center

Did you know that there are 300,000,000 bugs on planet earth for every one of us humans? Neither did I. Concetta and I learned that bit of trivia when we hiked to the Valley of Fire Visitor Center this morning after breakfast. I say “hiked” because the Center isn’t located here where our RV is parked. No, it’s about three miles from here by a narrow, two-lane road, flanked by millions of acres of desert.

When we first decided to stay here at the “Atlatl” campsite, we thought the Visitor Center WAS here. But that turned out to not be true. Yesterday, when we strolled to the far end of our camping area to see the native America pictographs, I caught sight of a park ranger in the pictograph parking area and dashed over to ask him. “Can you tell me how far away the Visitor Center is,” I asked. “Sure,” he said. “I’d say a couple of miles or so.” “Ah,” I said. “Is it okay to walk there?” He looked at me for a long moment and said, “Nobody really ever does that.” I told him thanks a lot and stepped back from his truck so he could continue on with his ranger duties. Guess we’ll be the first, I thought.

So it was that right after breakfast this morning, while the air was still long-sleeves cool and a gentle breeze was wafting over the desert playa, Concetta and I set off with our tiny backpack full of water bottles and energy bars to see if we might get to the Center and back before any afternoon heat might set in.

As it turned out, I started doubting our sanity about twenty minutes into the hike. As we left the confines of the camping area, reached the highway and kept walking, we rounded a bend in the road and discovered that the whole valley dropped away to the east so that we could see EVERY sign of civilization that could be seen from that vantage point. Trouble was there were no signs of civilization. Just a yellow-striped ribbon of asphalt that meandered listlessly in the brilliant morning sun, here and there disappearing from sight as it dipped into arroyos and climbed back out again, clear to the horizon. Occasionally a tiny automobile could be seen moving toward us, serving as some indication that life other than the two of us could be found out there among the creosote bushes and low-growing sage.

“Come on,” Concetta said. “We can make it.” “Make it where?” I asked. “I don’t see a Visitor Center anywhere.” “Has to be out there,” she said. “The ranger told you two miles.” And so we continued hiking. I found myself hoping that the ranger wasn’t someone they had just hired the previous week.

As fate would have it, we had hiked about a mile or more when we started seeing cars leave the main road and venture toward the sandstone cliffs on the north side of the valley. We couldn’t see any structures, but the distance from us to the turnout seemed to be about a mile and so lent some credence to the ranger’s sense of distance. “I bet that’s the turnoff to the Visitor Center,” I told Concetta.

And so it turned out to be. Before we had even walked that last mile, we saw the sandstone-colored building nestled close against the sandstone cliffs. It blended so well with the environment that you just knew that was the architect’s intent. Our only surprise at that point was the sign at the base of the visitor center driveway. “Visitor Center,” it said. “One half mile.” That bit of information added to my suspicion that, counting the walk to the main highway from our camp, and the walk from the main highway to the Center, the total walking distance was closer to three miles than two.

One of the first things we did at the Visitor Center was watch a video on the bugs of planet Earth. That’s where I learned the 300,000,000-to-one bit of etymological trivia. And that’s where I was momentarily catapulted back to my childhood. Let me explain. When I was a kid my dad raised horses. He and mom had, at one time, been horse-riding people. Once my brother and I arrived on the scene, their horse riding days were largely over. But Dad still kept them around for quite some time after that. My big complaint about the horses in those days was the fact that they always took precedence over the humans. No matter where we were, and how much fun we might be having, at some mid-afternoon hour Dad would rise and say, “Well, it’s time to start home so I can feed the horses.” I wasn’t very old when I vowed that I would NEVER own any pets of any kind who would control my life the way the horses controlled Dad’s.

Today, while Concetta and I were sitting in the movie theater watching a myriad of termites building a structure equivalent to a human structure two miles high, a youngster about seven years old ventured into the auditorium and dropped down in a seat. He had only sat there for perhaps two minutes, obviously lost in the sights and sounds of the bug world, when in marched “Dad” who said to junior, “Come on, the dog’s in the car.” With the greatest reluctance and several backward glances at the screen, junior finally rose and exited. Wow! I thought. There’s my childhood in microcosm. Did that insensitive dad have any realization of what he’d just done? I doubt it. Had he just thwarted what might have been the child’s only exposure to that particular fascinating topic? Possibly. Had I just witnessed a parent who didn’t have clue what was important in this world. Emphatically! A pox on that guy.

I expected the three mile return trip under the noonday sun to be just this side of exhausting, what with the tired feet and the increased temperature. But in reality I had more fun coming back than I did going out. I spent my time (when we weren’t dogging cars) looking for prime examples of the various rock types in the valley that were big enough to be representative but small enough to carry around in a pocket. That combined with photographing the various indigenous plants kept me occupied the whole walk back.

Only one event begs inclusion here that I haven’t mentioned, and it happened on BOTH legs of our journey. Much as I related a couple of days ago when the military jet flew by us at eye level as we enjoyed the view from the rim of Death Valley, today we belatedly looked up just in time to see a glaringly chartreuse Lamborghini go rumbling by us as looking so out of place that we might have been imagining it. Then, as we trekked back up the desert highway in the opposite direction that same Lamborghini sailed past again. We couldn’t have been more surprised if Marty McFly’s Delorean had dropped out of the sky and stopped to ask us for directions.

Now, back at our wonderful bastion of serenity and cool air (it’s only 77 in the coach right now with the windows open), Concetta is out on the lanai reading and I’m, well, you know what I’m doing. Until next time, keep on traveling!