Mt. Charleston

After successful hiking in Red Rock for the prior three weekends, we decided it was time to attempt Mt. Charleston. I had never been to the area but I had heard good things, the best being the 20 degree temperature drop compared to Vegas and since it has been so super hot in Vegas we were more that ready to try some place a little cooler. Once we arrived we were more than thrilled, it was an actual mountain with Pine trees and Aspens! We saw wild flowers, bees, birds, trees, everything you would expect to find in a mountain and here it was free for us to hike and the temperature was a wonderful 80 something as opposed to the 100+ temperatures we were hating. As we parked and I stepped out of the car I immediately noticed large sunflowers, my favorite flower! I had to take pictures of it and as I was a little bee landed and began doing what they do, so I was so happy to get cool bee and sunflower pictures just by luck. If only I had a really nice macro lens, ah well one day!


After I took several pictures of the sunflower we went over to the restaurant and looked for a hiking trail, they didn't have any and neither did the rental office but they told us the Cathedral trail was a pretty easy trail. They were dead wrong, it was not an easy trail, or at least because we took the path, but it was a beautiful and challenging trail and we enjoyed it none the less. I don't know how far it actually went because we could not make it to the end but we ended up going really far and had a nice view of what they called the Cathedral rock, or large mountain, whatever it is. Oddly enough I didn't take any pictures of it so if you want to see it you are going to have to walk up there yourself :o)
I did get a lot of good pictures of other things tho, like trees!


The trees were enormous, they were so large and went all the way into the sky. Besides trees and rocks I took a lot of cute pictures of Summer, imagine that!?!




Daddy also took a lot of good pictures of Summer and Mommy :o)




And Papa even took a cute family picture of us, I didn't get many good pictures of him and Summer but I still got a few cute pictures of everyone.





As you can see we had a wonderful time hiking in the mountains, who knew there were mountains so close to Vegas? We really enjoyed it and plan on going back this week and next, then we will be heading to the beach to say goodbye to the Summer, that should be an exciting trip!