We met Charlie and Terry Oliver at the grocery store in Overton one morning and they were going to guide us on a ride in the Valley of Fire. Peg and I were pretty excited because they have wintered down there for the past 3 years and knew of some awesome rides that had some scenery that most people never got to see. Especially those without horses and mules.
We drove out towards the Valley of Fire State park and parked in a turnout just before entering the Park proper. The sign read Blue Point Springs. I've got to tell you that I didn't see water anywhere! One of the big problems as I've mentioned before in the blogs is that there aren't a whole lot of places to park your stock trailers in the park. We managed to park our trailers in the turnout against the curb but were awfully close to highway traffic when the mules were tied to the trailers.
Alan, Peg and Pinky waiting to take off on another adventure!
Charlie letting us know where we were headed and what we could expect on the ride.
Charlie lead most of the ride on his Appy mule "Angel Eyes"
The ride out of the turnout started out pretty flat looking and I thought that this was going to be the view for most of it and it would be boring. Was I ever wrong!
Terri on her Morgan gelding. In no time we were getting closer to the Red Rock
Of course we had to climb on them.
Elisabeth on her Welsh Pony "Romeo"
Elisabeth and Peg lead for awhile.
The thing that I learned about this place was , What appears to be flat seldom is…
And we continue down into the "basement"…
Charlie and Terri stop to admire the view
Some of these washes are pretty deep
A dead end …..
out of that wash and off to another
I cannot imagine how much water must run down here in a storm but, Know that this wouldn't be a good place to see it from….
Elisabeth and Alan taking a break during the ride
Alan , Foxey his mule and Pinky rock crawling
I really enjoyed this ride on my new mule LuLu
Charlie and Alan rock crawling
LuLu and I even got into it.
Another rest from a good vantage spot.
It was amazing what good traction we had crawling around the rock.
This guy is so much fun to ride with!
This wash was a bit harder to ride
Terri leading us down the wash
When you ride these washes that are deep , you really need to have a working GPS or something to let you know where you're at. Sometimes you can travel a Long way before you're able to to climb out of them because of the sheer walls.
Another thing that you really don't want to do is ride under the undercuts in the banks. We seen several places where tons on bank came crashing down.
For the most part, we tried to stay in the middle of the wash because of that.
Alan coming down through the slick rock in a wash.
Alan and Peg coming down into the Wash
Mule ear shot!
Rock Crawlers!
Charlie trying to get Angel Eyes up there
The ride ended when the wash got to the highway. We rode up along a bridge and an area that looked like it was slated for a parking area. Which by the way would've made a really nice place for trailer parking for stock use. Too bad because that is one drawback to riding this area. I want to personally Thank Charlie and Terri Oliver, Alan Gillman, Elisabeth Schmitz-Burchartz and Peg Diefert for making these great memories by sharing this ride with me.The total ride length was 10.67 mi.
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