Lake Mead National Recreation Area--Echo Bay

Zion was enjoyable as always...next time we will do 'The Narrows! As we left Zion we drove south through Hurricane and St. George, then down through the Virgin River Gorge which took us through southwest Utah and northwest Arizona. Bob was glad that we were going down hill, not up, as it was a long, steep grade. At the bottom of the gorge we entered Mesquite, Nevada, where we stopped for gas at the wonderful price of $3.54 a gallon. After a quick trip to the Nevada Visitor Center we were back on the road and on our way to Echo Bay, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada.

As we drove into the Echo Bay area, we were afraid the campground was closed...none of the sites we saw were occupied! Once we got to the entrance to the campground we found that 3/4 of the campground was closed. The open loop had one RV--a couple from Germany, and a trailer that looked to be a host, but was not occupied! We found a great site where we would get lots of solar charging and made it our home for the next 5 days.

 After our first night at Echo Bay we realized there were wild burros in the area. They went through our campsite that night and left us presents everywhere. We spotted them in the valley later that day.

 We explored the campground and Echo Bay. The water in the lake is extremely low. The hotel and restaurant have been closed for over a year.

The next day we drove north out of the recreation area and spent some time at Valley of the Fire State Park, Nevada.

We drove the scenic drive to the end and hiked White Dome Trail. We hiked the trail to the remains of a movie set, The Professionals. The remaining structure was the Mexican hacienda in the movie. The main hacienda was where the parking lot is now.

It was a loop trail and we had to walk through a slot canyon to complete the loop.

Then  it was on to another trail in a box canyon.

 There were several geocaches hidden at Valley of the Fire State Park. This was a virtual cache where we had to have a photo with one of us and the GPS to e-mail to the cache owner.

 The next day we did some geocaching near some old mines. The local gem clubs allow people to search for gems. Bob and I didn't know what to look for except geocaches!

 Another cache was up a narrow dirt road at an abandoned mining area. This is a view of the road from the top where we found the cache.

 Geocaching was on the agenda the day of the Florida/Georgia game. We cached until time for the game since we couldn't get good television reception at the campground.  We drove to Callville Bay, also on Lake Mead and found a place for Bob to watch the game. This was the view out the window of the restaurant at Callville Bay.

 We enjoyed our stay at Echo Bay and Lake Mead so when it was time to move on, we didn't move very far. We drove to Las Vegas Bay Campground also in LMNRA.