Mom and I enjoyed every mile as we drove West from Galveston, TX on I-10, Las Vegas in our sites. It was a full three days of driving filled with some of the most incredible stops, views, and adventures. If you missed part one of our 10 day Southwest Road Trip, you can read all about it here. As mentioned in last week’s post, we set out on this road trip for the sole purpose of checking out a wholesale market in Vegas, called Magic, in search of unique inventory for my shop. The Magic market was only two of our four nights in Sin City, so we planned a couple side adventures off the strip to make the most of our time here.

Las Vegas is definitely larger than life, extravagant, and maybe even a little over the top, but its one of those places that you should visit at least once in your life. Even if gambling isn’t your thing (it isn’t mine), there are tons of shows, great shopping, amusement parks, spas, and resorts with incredible amenities. There is quite literally something for everyone. My favorite thing about Las Vegas, however, is that it is a great jumping off point for some pretty incredible outdoor adventures and historical landmarks!

Our first night amidst the neon lights, mom and I decided to just take it easy and relax in our room since it had been a long few days. We would be here for 5 days and four nights, so there would be plenty of time to get a true taste of the strip and surrounding area. We ordered room service, picked up a couple cake slices from a vending machine (you read that right!), and found a movie to enjoy before getting a good night’s sleep.

We spent our first two full days exploring Magic wholesale market. I’ve been in retail half of my working life, but it still surprises me how the timeline of things work. It was February, and we were already placing orders for Fall/Winter as well as getting a little preview of Spring 2024!!! I found a couple new brands to carry in the shop, and placed orders with my existing accounts for the upcoming seasons. All in all, Magic was a neat experience, but I don’t think it is a market that I will keep in my regular yearly lineup. Now, on to the good stuff!

I made sure to carve out time to explore the Vegas strip so mom could experience it both during the day and at night. We did a little shopping, watched the dancing fountains at the Bellagio, tried our luck with $20 in the penny slot machines, and watched the city come to life at night.

Our last full day before we would have to hit the road and begin our journey back to Texas, we took the adventure off strip. Our first stop was the Hoover Dam! I will be dedicating an entire blog to this architectural marvel once I finish up our full road trip, so I won’t spend too much time on it here. What I will say is you definitely GO!!!! Pictures do not do this place justice, and once again, I am left completely speechless and in awe with how structures of such magnitude were built without the technology that we know today. I didn’t expect to be as awestruck as I was, and really just went to “check it off the list” since we were in the area. What an incredible surprise!

Our second stop was one that I was most looking forward to, and in my opinion a “can’t miss” destination if you are in the Las Vegas area. Valley of Fire State Park is every bit worth the day trip. Honestly, I wish we could have spent multiple days here. It is located in Overton, NV and takes about an hour to drive out to the park from Las Vegas. While the views getting there aren’t that fabulous, the park itself will more than make up for it as you meander down winding roads through red rock canyons. Since we decided to squeeze both the Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire into the same day, which I don’t recommend, we didn’t have near the amount of time to explore as I would have liked. I definitely want to come back as there is an area in the park that looks similar to The Wave in AZ, but the hike to get there would have taken longer than we had time for. There were also several off road trails that I could have driven the trailhawk down.

We decided to hike the Mouses Tank trail. This is an easy hike with a sandy trail floor, towering canyons, and spectacular petroglyphs all over the canyon walls! The only other time I have seen petroglyphs was on a soft water rafting trip in the Grand Canyon. On that trip, the guides pointed out that petroglyphs were originally drawn at eye level. In the Grand Canyon, the petroglyphs had almost been buried from the river moving dirt and changes in topography from flash floods and opening the dam gates at Lake Powell. Here in the Valley of Fire, some of the petroglyphs towered overhead! It is the evidence of centuries of wind whipping through the canyons and changing the topography in a very different way than at the Grand Canyon. Mother Nature will never cease to amaze me.

I didn’t want to leave. Something tugged at the deepest parts of me and beckoned me to stay longer. To sit amongst the stories etched in stone. Even though this land is not Cherokee land, I could hear the distant drums and songs of my ancestors. I wanted to study the images, decipher the stories, and allow them to be etched on my heart and in my memory forever. That is exactly what this little easy trail did for me. It made me feel closer to my native heritage than I ever have before. More than ever, I want to dig deeper into that side of my family tree as I believe there is so much we can learn about ourselves if we take the time to listen to the waymakers who came before us.

It was time to make our way back to the vehicle and hit the road to Las Vegas for our final night. There was so much more adventure to get into on our road trip! We grabbed one more slice of cake from the vending machine, (because of course we did!) packed our bags for an early departure, and fell asleep to the neon lights dancing out our window one last time.