April 12, 2013 Cathedral Gorge State Park, NV

We talked to a gentleman at the campground in Valley of Fire about Cathedral gorge and he said it was fabulous siltstone formations with very narrow, very deep slot canyons in them.  Can’t pass up something like that. My favorite kind of thing, slot canyons.

It is a big bowl with edges like this, with slots like this in them.  It was at one time a lake in it, the water brought down the volcanic ash sediment into the lake and it layered up on the bottom, the earth faulted and the lake drained. The wind and rain eroded it into this. Many more slots, with many twisting side canyons.

John squeezing through. Which one shall we go in next?

The top of the formation looks like with narrow fins and spires.  John appearing ghostlike in a shaft of  sunlight.

 

Exiting back out and into the next one. I am looking up at

This straight above me. The canyons were really deep and parts of them were covered on top like this one with  sunlit ceiling.  The car in one of the many parking areas.

The texture of the wall was different in each one. Wild shapes.  Spires.

Very narrow. The canyon pictured here has a trail up it to the lookout on the rim. John didn’t want to hike it when we could drive it, so we drove up later.

 

At the entrance to the canyon is the picnic area, with hoodoo’s and caves like these. Sue walking like an Egyptian with both feet pointed down the canyon, my body pointed forward, arms one in front and one in back and my head looking down the canyon. It was so narrow.

Three different wall textures in the same frame.  The CCC built the picnic area. They had just finished their job at Overton Anasazi museum where they reconstructed some pueblos on original foundations, so they built features  in the park in that style. Not sure if the barbeque is Anasazi.

Some kind of iguana like lizard was slinking around. He ran really comically. He  lifted himself up off the ground and ran kind of like a dog swaying back and forth, very quickly, with his shadow underneath him doing the same dance. The CCC built this water tower  Anasazi style, thick stone wall. They drilled a well, pumped the water up into a storage tank in the upper level and ran water down to the picnic area by gravity. The water had a very high alkaline content so  don’t use it anymore. They pump water out from town.

Back into the canyons. They called them caves because some of them are partially covered at the ends. Moon cave, Canyon cave, etc..

One more that is really tight. John is looking up at this.  Very nice.

The end of this one is shaped like a quartz crystal. This is looking straight up from where John is standing.

I believe John got tired of me asking him to pose.  The CCC built this restroom building. It is also Anasazi style, thick stone wall and little high windows. It has outhouses in it, so they don’t use it anymore, they have flush toilets in the new restrooms.

A thunderbird at the end of one of the canyons.  Yet another one to explore.

The light on the red rocks was stunning.

Can you tell we are having fun??

Out one more and into another.

Oops, this one is a little tight. Then we  climbed up on top of the formations and looked down into some of the canyons.  John is in the middle of this photo, well both of them I guess.

This is what you see at Miller overlook. In the background you can see the canyon the trail that we didn’t take comes up.

We stopped in at Kershaw Ryan state park right outside Caliente on the way back. It used to be ranch before it was a park. It is up a nice cool canyon with a spring and trees. It has a little waterfall, wading pool and picnic tables. We hiked up to the overlook (John hiked  this one, you couldn't drive up) and looked down into the valley above the  green area.