The Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is just a few miles west of Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert, and so we took the drive. Satisfied by two scoops of gelato, it seemed the perfect time for a drive. The rock formations, natural beauty, and the vivid colors of the rocks attracted us as well as about a bajillion other people, but we had no trouble taking it all in.

The sandstone cliffs at Red Rock, thousands of feet high, are made up of the Aztec Sandstone — in case you were wondering. This formation, about 180 – 190 million years old, is comprised of lithified sand dunes that formed in a vast desert that covered a large part of the southwestern United States during the Jurassic time. (We swiped this text from the tourist site, which is why it’s so specifically weird.)

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