Day 77 - Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT & Valley of Fire State Park, NV

We left Bryce Canyon and headed towards our first stop for the day, Cedar Breaks National Monument.

We were travelling on Route 89 and to get to Cedar Breaks we came off onto the 143. It was just after this junction where we saw our favourite road sign so far:

I love that they must get so many people coming onto the 143 thinking its the 89 that they need to put a sign up. The best thing is that the 143 sign is just a couple of metres after the 'This is not the 89' sign just in case you didn't get the message the first time!

The 143 is known as the Patchwork Scenic Highway. It is a 55-mile road that is supposed 'to show different environments in colour'. It was a very pretty road, taking you through farmland, meadows, lakes and forest. There were times when we felt we could have been in the alps with the lakes, pine trees and the wooden chalet-style houses.

We reached Cedar Breaks and parked up by the visitors center so that we could get our park map, park paper, passport stamp, and so Lee could have his much-loved walk around the astronomy book section just in case there is anything new here compared to other parks! There wasn't!

Cedar Breaks National Monument is a natural amphitheater stretching 3 miles across and 2,000 feet down. There is a short walk along the edge which we did to take in the view.

Around the top of the Monument were loads of lovely wild flowers with volunteer rangers explaining what each one was (and probably stopping stupid people from picking or treading on them). Given how much desert we have seen recently, it was nice to see green fields with flowers and bees.

Back on the road, we now headed out of Utah and into Nevada. We've stayed in Las Vegas a number of times but for this trip, decided to do something different so we headed towards Valley of Fire State Park where we were camping for the night.

Not far from Valley of Fire, we spotted a little museum and decided to check it out (the decision was helped as I needed a wee!). The museum was called Lost City Museum and its located in a little town called Overton. The museum was originally built to house artifacts from sites (ancient and non-ancient) that were flooded when Lake Mead was formed but it was extended in the 80s to also include a prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan site that archaeologists found next door. You can see the excavation of this site inside the museum itself. The best part about the museum for us was the replica Puebloan houses outside which you can freely play in. We're big kids really!

Our final stop was Valley of Fire State Park which is only 40 minutes from Las Vegas. We were surprised we hadn't heard of this place before given the number of trips we've made to Vegas in the past, it would be really easy to hire a car and head out to the park for the day to get away from the madness of the strip.

The park is not on fire, although given how hot it was, it felt like it should be! The name comes from the 'fire' coloured Aztec sandstone in the park. We did the scenic drive around the park, stopping off at some of the look outs and trail heads to take photos and stretch our legs. It was too hot and probably too dangerous to do any hike longer than 10 minutes but there was so much to see from the car, we didn't mind. The last thing we saw before heading to the campsite was the 2,000 year old petroglyphs at Atlatl Rock. This is the largest concentration of petroglyphs in the state. In the past we have been looking at petroglyphs high up but it was great to climb the stairs and see them up close. These ancient people have a very similar drawing style to me, I love stick men.

We loved the campsite we were at. It was a State Park campsite and only $20 for the night which included the $10 entrance fee. Given the price, you got a lot for your money compared to other campsites. Each site had a fire pit with a grill, covered picnic table, tent pad and water spigot. There were flushing toilets, sinks with running water and free showers. The sites were well spread out so it didn't feel like you had neighbours and there were lots of rocks to climb on and check out the views of the park (which of course Lee did!).

The sites also came with your own bees. These little fellas would sit in the water spigot waiting for you to give them some water. There were signs up suggesting putting little dishes of water down for them so they leave the spigot alone although our ones weren't keen on this and one even ended up in the water bottle. He survived thanks to Lee's quick actions rescuing him.

For dinner we had jacket potatoes and sausages cooked on the fire. This was our first ever time cooking jacket potatoes from scratch on a fire and it worked out really well. Lee did a good job making sure the inside was cooked and the outside lovely and crispy, maybe a little on the carbony side.

After the success of the dashboard cookies, we decided to try some of the left over cookie dough on the fire. We wrapped them up in foil and stuck them in with the potatoes. We learnt afterwards that cookies cook quicker than potatoes as when we took them out, they were black! The one edible corner of one of the cookies did taste good so something we will need to try again but maybe only keep them in for a fraction of them time!

Our night in Valley of Fire was so peaceful. There was very little sound from either humans or animals and even with Vegas being so close, the stars looked stunning.