Red rock

It would have a We wanted to do some hiking away from the strip. I miss the mountains and the beauty of the desert. So we rented a car for one day and headed up to red rock. We decided to rent a car about 2 miles off the strip because it was so much cheaper, so walked to pick up our car. The bellagio is so pretty. 

And Paris! At this point in the day it was cool, but not bad. As we were walking some workers asked if we were from Wisconsin. At first we both thought it's because we look like sturdy Wisconsin dairy farmers, but then we realized it was because we were in capris and no jackets. (:

We crossed the freeway and finally picked up our little suv. On our way!

And Frankie was on her way to school. I love daddy done hair! (:

I googled "best Las Vegas hikes" and picked one that took us to an overlook with a view of the strip. It was 6.1 miles and moderate difficulty. Done! We stopped at a scenic overlook to take a picture of this ridiculous weather. Seriously?!

Once we got to our trailhead it was sprinkling pretty steadily, but there were blue skies beyond that, so we decided to drive around and enjoy the scenery. We came upon Bonnie Creek Western Town and decided to check it out. So cute!

It's got a hotel, train, and this little western village all done up. 

And because we are hilarious:

And:

More evidence of our fun hijinx:

And lastly:

I need to splice these together to give the full affect. 

It finally stopped sprinkling, so we checked out the whole town. 

Love these cute signs. 

This would be a fun place to check out with the crew. They do shows (melodramas, to be precise) and hangings. There's also a little petting zoo the kids would like. 

I love little western towns like this. I'm a sucker for them. 

The weather was still looking pretty treacherous, but we decided to go for it. 

It was so pretty!

It sprinkled off and on the whole way up, but we were hiking uphill, so we were warm and it was ok. 

There was a trail and we could see horseshoes prints that we followed, so we were fairly confident we were going the right way. 

Until... we came upon a three way fork in the road and it wasn't at all obvious which way to go. There looked like there was an old riverbed going up, so we made our best guess and took that one. 

It got more chilly as we went up higher and even started hailing these little pellets. 

There were some pretty ominous looking storm clouds coming and going throughout our whole hike!

And then it would be clear. Amy said we experienced 3 seasons during our time on the mount. 

We found what looked like a quarry and were pretty sure we were not on the right path. We kept going though, since we'd already come so far. We kept going over each summit and hoping to see the valley, but there was always another peak. We finally gave up. 

Heading down. 

And that's when it got real uncomfortable. It started hailing harder, like the size of dipping dots. The wind was blowing strong up there and the hail stung as it whipped our faces. It was freezing and we were in capris and 3/4 length sleeves, no sweaters. 

We also somehow got going down a different way down than we came up. It was all very curious. We followed bike tracks down through a canyon so it wasn't as pretty. My hands were so numb that it was hard to move my fingers. Thankfully the sun peeped through and dryed and warmed us so it was much more comfortable. And when we finally made it to our car we cranked the heat to thaw us the rest of the way. 

We were pooped with our 3 mile walk to pick up our car plus 7 mile mountain hike. We decided to check out the monte Carlo's free buffet so we didn't have to go anywhere. We were sore and wind blown and had red, chapped cheeks and necks. I went to bed early with a sad tummy and wind caused headache. It's fun to be able to go to bed whenever we want because we can. (: and even though we didn't make it to our destination and got pelted by hail and halfway froze, it was still an awesome girls day.