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Valley Of Fire State Park:

Our next destination for the day was Valley Of Fire State Park which was around 60 miles from Red Rock Canyon. The drive on the valley of fire highway from I-15 to the park entrance was very scenic.

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More pics of Valley Of Fire State Park. We reached there at noon and the heat was unbearable:

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We visited all the scenic spots inside the park and each spot was beautiful in it's own sense:























We could have spent more amount of time inside the park but the extreme heat didn't allow us.

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NV-167 along Lake Mead:

The next and final destination for the day was Hoover dam. We took the NV-167 which passes along the shores of lake Mead. The drive on this twisty road was fantastic. While the highway had the beautiful Lake mead on one side, the other side was a complete moonscape. It was a miniature version of the Extraterrestrial Highway. There were lots of scenic view points on this deserted road. We hardly came across any vehicle on this road. Since the Lake Mead had dried up a lot, all the boat access along this road was closed. They had also closed down the toll booth on this road.

Few pics of NV-167:

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Hoover Dam:

In our entire trip, the time we regret wasting in, was at Hoover Dam. We reached Hoover Dam at around 3 PM. We didn't find anything great about the place. I had lot of expectations after reading the history and stories of this dam but we felt it was bit hyped. After wasting half day at this place, we drove back towards our hotel at Las Vegas. I would any day prefer KRS dam at Mysore over this.

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Day 6:

This day's plan was to visit the Death Valley National Park in California. We had the flight back to Boston next day night and hence the plan was to visit Death Valley this day and roam around Las Vegas downtown the final day. I got up early in the morning and was making some route plans. All of a sudden an idea flashed to me and asked my wife "Why don't we visit Zion National Park in Utah". We were in no mood to roam around in Las Vegas the next day as we had completely lost interest in roaming downtowns after visiting such beautiful natural places. I made some click calculations and the Zion plan was finalized. We started the drive towards Utah at 5:30 AM.

Zion National Park:

We reached Zion at around 10 AM. Since this was a sudden plan, I didn't know what all spots to visit at Zion. Quickly glanced at the park map which was given at the entrance and decided to drive on UT-9 which passes through the park and then take the shuttle from the visitor center at base to get inside the scenic route where no private cars are allowed during summer.

The UT-9 inside the park had amazing views. UT-9 inside the park:

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The Zion National park had amazing views everywhere:








While I was enjoying the twisty UT-9, my wife was capturing the amazing views from the road:


Used the park shuttle to roam inside the park. We got down at most of the stops and took the trails:

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More pics from the amazing Zion:





























It was a very good decision to visit Zion National Park at the last moment. We enjoyed each and every moment spent inside the park. The views were just amazing. A trek to Angel's landing would have been amazing but we were not in a position to hike so much. After spending the whole day at Zion, we returned to our hotel at Las Vegas.

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Day 7:

This was the final day of our trip. The flight back to Boston was at 10:45 PM and the whole day was at our disposal. As I mentioned in the earlier post, we had reserved this day to just roam around Las Vegas. But I changed the plan and we decided to visit the Death Valley National Park in California which was around 2.5 hours drive from Las Vegas. We reached Death Valley at around 8:30 AM.

Death Valley National Park:
We had heard about the extreme heat of Death Valley and hence carried loads of coconut water tins in the ice cooler.

This board greeted us at the entrance of the park:


The temperature outside hovered around this figure for most part of the day:


We drove to the Dantes View first to have an aerial look of the Badwater basin:

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What was this? An extraterrestrial sign?








We then drove towards Badwater Basin which is 282 feet below sea level:

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The extreme heat at Badwater Basin was unbearable. Witnessed a guy faint over there. We couldn't stand there for longer duration even after wearing caps:

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Next stop was Artist Drive. Enjoyed driving here:

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More pics of Artist Drive:

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Mesquite Sand Dunes:

The destination after Artist Drive was Mesquite Sand Dunes.:


























Scottys Castle is closed due to the damage of last year's flash floods. We also wanted to visit Rhyolite - a ghost town but canceled as were tired owing to the extreme heat. We just drove back to Las Vegas. We directly went into the McCarran Rent-A-Car center and returned the C300 with a heavy heart. It was an awesome experience driving the C300 for almost 4100 miles. The car return formalities were extremely smooth. Once again we had a very good experience with Spirit Airlines flying back to Boston. The flight was on time.

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We had an overall extremely satisfying trip with enough Vitamin-D stocked up for the next two winters . The best experience in this entire trip was the first day's drive on ET highway, US-50 and the visit to Oljato-Monument Valley.

But the only thing that we were disappointed about was our inability to find any trace of extraterrestrial activity. We searched for it in canyons, monuments, deserts, valleys, highways but couldn't find any trace.

Oh Wait! We remember lining up in front of some board which had something written as "Aliens" during immigration at airport last year. Are we the supposed aliens? I wonder!

Aliens spotted taking a selfie with their spaceship at Extraterrestrial highway