They were clearly on a mission to become social media influencers, and therefore decided to spend their day taking a lifetime supply of Instagram photos while ignoring everyone else on the trail.Īfter waiting a few minutes for a chance to take a picture that wasn’t full of millennials, I decided to develop a different strategy. You may experience slightly different people, but trust me, they’ll be there.ĭuring my visit, there was a group of about a half-dozen young adults who had thoughtfully brought a Bluetooth speaker with them, so everyone could enjoy their music. Oh, and those are the people standing in your way of taking a picture. This is the Fire Wave, and it’s pretty impressive. This area is beautiful enough to be an attraction on its own, but if you follow the cairns a bit further… ![]() …you climb back up onto a wide-open plateau of slickrock. The trail drops down and passes through this strange little valley as it circles around that hill. Sure, I don’t want people leaving graffiti behind, or vandalizing the park, but seriously… “including stacked rocks”? That counts as vandalism? This was all understandable, to a point, in the interest of managing the crowds and protecting the land. It had been tough to find a parking spot, and I wasn’t allowed to stop along the road to get the photos I wanted to take. I must admit, there were a few things that annoyed me about Valley of Fire. I still expected it to turn north eventually, but instead, it went the other way, circling around to the right, almost directly below the road. … but instead, it headed directly towards this big sandstone hill. I thought it was going to head towards this wide-open space to the north… The Fire Wave trail didn’t go the way I was expecting. On this trip, it looked like a great hiking option - one that I could knock out in an hour or so. Of course, the rock formation existed, but the official trail was only developed back around 2012. ![]() Also, the park closes at dusk and there are signs everywhere that state that you cannot be in the park when it gets dark.I didn’t hike the Fire Wave trail on my previous visit to Valley of Fire, because it didn’t exist. I would just try to factor at least 20 mins into your time. ![]() I guess it’s become a very popular place to shoot photos, especially during dusk over the years. I couldn’t believe that there were that many people trying to visit. Timing: One thing we did not factor in was that there was an actual line to get into the park. There were other people there (photographers, hikers, Instagrammers, etc.), but mostly everyone was doing their own thing and wasn’t paying attention to you. Once we got to the Fire Wave, I had my dress in my backpack and all I did was slip it over my clothes. I wore hiking shoes, but it definitely was not needed. You could probably just walk in flip-flops if you wanted to. The Pink Canyon Trail was super flat and you don’t need any special type of footwear. If you want to dress up and take pictures, I think this is a pretty easy place to do it. We mostly stuck with a 16mm prime for our wide landscape shots and a 35mm prime and a 90mm prime for all the portrait pictures. We shot with our Sony A6600 and A7Riii with a variety of lenses. We knew we wanted to take pictures of the Fire Wave during sunset and dusk so we tried to leave Las Vegas about 1.5 hours before sunset. PARK ENTRANCE FEE: $10.00 per vehicle (Non-NV Vehicles: $15.00 per vehicle)ĭISTANCE: Approximately one-mile roundtrip ![]() I would highly recommend this park for anyone who needs a break from the Las Vegas strip or if you want a pit stop on your way to Zion National Park. Not sure if this is allowed or not, but we didn’t encounter any problems while we were there. Also, you will have to park on the side of the road. It doesn’t have a well-marked trailhead so we had to use Google Maps to help us locate the start of the trail. The Pink Canyon Trail also leads to the Fire Wave and actually gets you there faster if you’re in a hurry. Most people hike the more popular Fire Wave Trail, but we opted to do the Pink Canyon (aka Pastel Canyon) Trail instead. The Fire Wave is famous because of the way the sandstone is made up of different layers of red, pink, and white sediment that resembles an ocean wave. Valley of Fire State Park is located about an hour north of Las Vegas, Nevada by car. We only had an afternoon to visit Valley of Fire State Park so we decided to use our time wisely and just go straight to the Fire Wave.
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