Forty years ago Forrest Mars (the Mars candy billionaire who invented the Milky Way bar) started a high end, small batch chocolate company, Ethyl M Chocolates, named after his mother. If you go to the factory in Henderson not only can you do a self guided tour of the factory or do a wine and …
Spring Mountain Ranch State Park abuts Red Rock Canyon State Park to the south. It is our fourth Nevada State Park this week and we can’t help but me impressed with all this untouched land set aside for nature seekers. Spring Mountain Ranch State Park is 528 acres of Desert scrub, Black brush, Pinyon-Juniper and …
Valley of fire is 40,000 acres of red sandstone swirled together with grey and tan sandstone. Native Americans carved into the sandstone 2,000 years ago, marking their territory on huge boulders, next to arches and 150,000 million year old petrified wood. This is another place with a sign off the 15 freeway that we have …
Cathedral Gorge State Park is two hours from Great Basin National Park when headed to Las Vegas. We stopped here for the Moon Caves. Moon Caves are actually dramatic slot canyons, some of them over a hundred feet tall, created from the erosion of millions of year old bentonite clay, the remnants of an ancient …
Lehman Caves were formed 550 million years ago. They have been protected as a national monument and extensively visited by tourists since 1922. The speleothems (cave formations) in this cave are spectacular. I have never seen a cave like it. The honeycombed maze of tunnels that makes up the longest cave system in Nevada is …
The Great Basin, in Nevada but on the border of Utah, is the dry, mountainous region in between the Sierra Mountains and the Wasatch Mountains. Great Basin National Park is most famous for its Bristlecone pine groves, having the darkest skies in the United States, Wheeler Peak Glacier (the last in Nevada) and the Lehman …
Baker, Nevada has an official population of 32 people. If you aren’t visiting Great Basin National Park then you probably aren’t visiting Baker, especially in the off season (now). We are here for the national park. It is a sign that we have driven past so many times while taking a trip to Idaho, Utah …
Built in 2015, Red Hills Desert Garden is Utah’s first desert conservation garden. The five acre garden (which boasts 5,000 water-efficient plants, a 1,150’ stream with native and endangered fish species, a faux slot canyon and dinosaur tracks) is the perfect stop after a seven hour drive. The prehistoric tracks that were found onsite date …
A trip to Lake Havasu wouldn’t be complete without getting on a boat so we booked the Copper Canyon tour through Sunset Charter and Tour Co. Copper Canyon is an abandoned mine, the largest copper producing mine along the Colorado River. Now it is a spring break hotspot, where boaters go to jump into the …
For over a century, before the London Bridge was purchased and relocated to Lake Havasu City, the London Bridge spanned the River Thames in England. When the 130,000 ton bridge was purchased in 1968 (including its vintage lamps made from the melted down cannons of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army) it became the world’s largest antique. Robert …
The Rim Trail is a 13 mile super accessible, absolutely breathtaking trail along the rim of the Grand Canyon. The two and a half mile portion of the trail that we walked, from the Village to Yavapai Geology Museum, is known as the Trail of Time, and a walk through the rocks of the grand …
The Grand Canyon has been admired for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the railroad arrived in 1901 that more people were able to access one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Photography studios, hotels, souvenir shops, concessioners, cabins and restaurants popped up in no time, creating the Grand Canyon Village. These …
According to Theodore Roosevelt, the Grand Canyon is “the one great sight which every American should see”. Mather Point is one of the most popular views of the Grand Canyon, and seemed to be the best place to stop as our daughter stamps her 16th National Park in her National Park passport book. From Mather …
The Neon Museum is a boneyard (a term used in the commercial signage industry to refer to a place where retired signs go). There are dozens of boneyards in Las Vegas, but the Neon Museum is the only one open to the public. Since the museum opened in 1996, they have acquired the best retired …
There is more to Beaver, Utah than delicious ice cream and cheese at the Creamery. In the county of Beaver there are 114 listings on the National Registrar of Historic places. The Beaver United States Post Office, with its perfectly laid bricks and copper clad roof was built in 1941. It reflects both Moderne and …