So breathtakingly beautiful. I never thought I'd fall in love with the desert landscape.
The drive from the strip was less than an hour and well worth the $7 parking admission into the canyon. The visitors center had a gift shop and maps of the canyon with the various stops with hiking trails. Each trail was labeled by how difficult if was, how much ground it covered and an estimate of how long it would take to hike it.
We stopped at the Calico Hills the longest, it's the first stops along the 13-mile one-way traffic loop through the canyon. The Calico's are the most colorful of all the hiking spots and I felt the most fun to free-climb. It was like being a kid again; but instead of climbing up the cabinets in the kitchen like a monkey, I was climbing up amazing red rocks like a mountain goat. I could have spent the entire day at the Calico Hills, but we wanted to see the rest of the canyon. However, after doing a nice slow drive through the loop and stopping a few more times for the sake of pictures, nothing compared to the Calico Hills in beauty or enjoyment. The other stops were pretty; more mountainous and rocky.