More catch up to February 12th…

It was almost time for Chinese New Year – the Year of the Dog.

At the Wynn in Las Vegas.

A nice carousel made of flowers.

In Love of course…couldn’t resist.

The Bellagio has the most notable flower displays.

With Pierre, Linda and the awesome Tammie and Jim…they were kind enough to show us all these wonderful places and lead wonderful hikes.

Red Rock’s Turtlehead Peak Trail.

Linda and Tammie below with Turtlehead Peak in the back…yes we climbed it.

Shameless selfie on the summit.

Not many people see Las Vegas from here.

Tammie and Jim at the summit. They climb this peak once a year every year and we were fortunate enough to get to hike along this time.

We could see our campground from the top.

Panorama from the top.

Different panorama.

On our way down..we realized we’re pretty high up.

Linda on the scary part.

Linda on the calmer part…I can’t tell the difference.

A view of Las Vegas.

Red Cap is another great trail..I had done it a few years ago and it was lots of fun…we’ll do it again some day.

On the way home that night we saw these wild burrows.

The next day was for Late Night Trailhead and the Cottonwood Valley.

Nice sculptures by the side of the road.

The beginning of the trail included this pigduck.

We started to see the Rubber Ducky Trail Tree....at first it was there so that mountain bikers would not get clipped by the Joshua Tree and they would remember to duck.

It is after all a single track bike trail as well…but the tree and the ornaments grew to this.

The four of us by the tree.

A view of the Cottonwood valley.

We loved the colours in these mountains….time to get ready for the next day’s hike.

This is the cliff up to Cowboy Caves Trail.

Linda on a ledge…this stuff was not fun to climb as it crumbled.

Inside the cave. This photo didn’t show all the graffiti … lot of it and many vagrants have used it in the past…now not so much.

The exit from the cave. We were lucky that the sun was at the right angle and we had beautiful light along with our flashlights.

Tammie told us that on a previous hiking trip, an archeologist told her that this was a fossilized fish. Though hard to see in the photo…it looked very convincing as there were lots of seashell fossils in the area.

Tammie and Linda heading down the valley back to the car.

I couldn’t decide which photo I liked better…you?

Off to Yuma next…