Today was an all-day Lake Mead day.

We started with a boat rental at Callville Bay marina a half hour drive from our campsite.  We selected a 13 person pontoon boat from the nearly-deserted marina – despite the fact that apparently the lake is up over 30 feet in the last two years, business everywhere in Lake Mead is way down.  We (Tom) drove the boat for three hours and it was getting hot so our choice of a before-lunch ride was good.

Scott did back-to-back senior moment moves.  He carefully charged his drone overnight, packed it up, then left it in Khan.  He then applied suntan lotion thoroughly – noticing that it seemed to have an unpleasant smell and much less liquid than the last time he applied it- then realized it was insect repellent (same size can…)

After lunch we drove to Valley of Fire State Park, which was close to, but different from, Lake Mead National Park.  This required a separate $15 admission from a unmanned kiosk with cars backed up trying to pay.  When Tom got his chance, it refused to give a ticket/receipt – a problem other drivers noticed as well.  Sure was tempting to just drive around.

There was a nice but also undermanned visitors centers, and lot of amazing red rocks and other color rocks and such.  Due to the heat, many of the trails were closed and parking was limited for some reason.  But we worked hard to get our $15 worth.

We noticed on the map they gave us that there was a campground with “RV hookups” on one end of the park.  We were curious what hookups they had – as far as we could tell they just had water.  But – we saw 4 bighorn sheep wander right through the middle of the campsite and Scott got several excellent pictures.

We returned to our campsite at 4PM for nap (Scott only,) dinner, and sleep.