April 20, 2017 Gold Butte National Monument, Nevada

Today we drove to Gold Butte National Monument. The BLM website says ‘ The new Gold Butte National Monument covers nearly 300,000 acres of remote and rugged desert landscape in southeastern Nevada, where dramatically chiseled red sandstone, twisting canyons, and tree-clad mountains punctuate desolate stretches of the Mojave Desert. The brightly hued sandstone provides a stunning canvas.’

Sign for Gold Butte, and an interesting sign about flat tires and hot radiators, we past the turn for Carp, Nevada- Carp??, drove through Lake Mead rec area and back to our camp at Valley of Fire. Gold butte is across the Virgin River from Valley of Fire- a continuation of the same red rocks.

Lots of flowers in Gold butte. Huge  mexican gold poppies—at least 12 inches high, purple flowers and lots of  desert marigolds.

We drove the car into Golden Butte to see if we could get the bus in. There is the campground area we checked out, totally full. But lots of other places around the bus can park in. This wall is part of a storage shed from when the CCC worked here.

Tiny purple flowers, yellow flowering bush, mix of yellows and cholla, and silver cholla flowers. John with Joshua tree.

John on top of a red rock, cholla, yellow flowering bush, butterfly and strawberry hedge hog cactus.

View of Joshua trees, yellow flowering bushes, red rocks and way in the background across the river is Valley of Fire. John on top of a holey rock with flowers in some of the holes.

John on top of the Whitney dam built by Luke Whitney in the 1800’s and restored by the CCC. Carpet of purple flowers.

Desert trumpet, cool hole in the rock, phacelia and white flowering bush. Yellow flowers and cool rock formation.

John found a nice cool spot on the rocks for lunch. Looking up from lunch is this formation.

Bush with curly leaves and buckhorn cactus. Yellow flowering bush and red rocks.