The Northshore road

A view from Northshore road, LMNRA, NV

On the way back from Overton we stopped a few places to enjoy the amazing scenery down the Northshore road. Maybe because it's just the back yard of Vegas, the Lake Mead NRA (National Recreational Area, nothin' to do with rifles, TYVM) doesn't get much credit for the lovely and dramatic vistas it affords - perhaps not as much as it should.

What in the Sam Hill?
Hamblin Cleopatra Mountain, LMNRA, NV

The landscape is a long history of tortured rock, with upturned layers, basalt scattered broadcast, and eroded shapes. There is an old volcano that's been torn in half by a big old fault. You drive past one half of a mountain, and then ten miles later the other half. (Or - one day! - hike it.)

If your taste runs to red sandstone, there are softly rounded outcrops that the road winds briefly through (trailheads here too), as well as tall temples out on the plain. (At first glance they look like ruins, but made by wind and water, not by us.)

A number of old mines can be cautiously investigated - though many of the roads and trails need a high clearance vehicle to follow washes up into the hills or towards the lake. There are warm springs where you can bathe with nibbly fish. Slot canyons. A valley ringed about with the beautiful red Aztec sandstone that was once part of the Jurassic sand dunes that covered much of the southwest. The undrowned ghost town of St Thomas, whose ruins have been exposed by the receding of Lake Mead ( ... which, alas, sounds more fun than it is. Perhaps better with the charm of distance still on it. Come and visit and I promise to not take you there! Unless on the way to the salt mines.)

You get hints of all this from the road, in the tops of palm trees over a low rise to the west, a flash of curved red rock far back between a break in the hills, or a flat sandy wash that curves invitingly away from the sun. We've barely scratched the surface, and almost I despair - there is so much to explore we'll never feel finished here.

Guess I'll stop trying to drink the ocean or eat the whole desert. One day.