Captains bLog Day 3- Vegas

Everytime I fly into Las Vegas my attention doesn’t go to the lights, the shows, or the giant tourist drinks that are so big you have to wear them around your neck. Instead I set my sights on the mountains that encase the city and keep the crazy in and lets the peaceful out. Bill said – You go all the way to Vegas and don’t care about shows or parties, you just want to sit in the dirt and rocks! I can’t help it the desert sings to me. So we headed out to Red Rock Canyon and when we got there we went into the visitors center and I was so excited because they had tons of books about nevada and the desert and ghost towns. You know I got one. We headed out to the Canyon and the first stop was a huge range of sand dunes that over the years have hardend into what can only be described as sand colored soft serve mounds. We hiked up and down these big sand rocks and it was suprisingly easy because the sand made the rocks very grippy if I may make that word up. I met an english bulldog named churchill who was also jamming around the rocks and he was so stinkin cute. He would sit like a little man and pose on the rocks so his owner could take pictures of him. You seem to have super sonic hearing in this canyon because you can hear conversations from way too far than is normal. Across the canyon were 2 little boys trying to hike down and all the sudden I hear one kid say OOOOHHH shit! I slipped dude. Then the same kid says to his buddy- dude watch my kung fu move and did a kick and says that that bitch! The other kid got real nervous and told him to shut up so his mom didn’t hear him swearing. I laughed.
We got into the car and headed to the next hiking spot. We had to pee by the time we got there so we found some spot in the bushes which wouldn’t seem like a good idea later. We found a rock that had petroglyph hand prints that was awesome and an old agave roasting pit. I was in heaven. We started climbing because I saw a little cave I wanted to go in and I made it to the cave first and then as renner was coming up she yelled. Somehow she had gotten cactus spikes stuck all in her leg meat. After we got most of them out I heard some kind of animal noise and started to climb higher to follow it. I got to a huge rock and on top was a pair of birds making their noises Im not sure what they were but I suspect some kind of quail. So I was up there just looking at them and I hear renner scream from the ground. I yelled to see what was wrong and she yelled back there was a tarantula. Now this was a moment I had been waiting for so long. I love to see things in the wild that I have only seen behind glass. I starting jumping rock to rock running trying to get down and screaming the whole time, keep it there, don’t let it get away! I got to the bottom and it was awesome. Brown, hairy and gigantic. I watched the spider walk around and probably wonder why the hell these giants weren’t running away from him. I didn’t want to leave the spider I just wanted to hang out with it but on the run down I had lost my sunglasses so I went back up for them. I never found them and we continued on our journey. We stopped on an overlook to see a giant dry wash and there was a big cactus and I told renner to pretend that it was poking her so I could take a picture. As soon as I said that she really did run into the cactus and she had a wad of spikes stuck in her arm meat. This is me was just too much to take. I laughed my ass off.
In the words of bill squire- we love nature, we’re just not good at it.