Walking Near the Las Vegas Wash

Friday December 29th 2017

If it wasn’t for my clock with the day of the week display, I wouldn’t have known today was Friday. The TV had sports from ten in the morning forward and it just generally acted like a weekend day. The weather was terrific with the high temperature in the mid sixties. The weather forecasters on TV seem to be starting to complain about the record period without rain and the higher than normal temperatures. I think they should just be thankful they aren’t experiencing the snow and bone chilling cold of the north and east.

Las Vegas Wash in the Wetlands Park with the Las Vegas strip in the background.

This area had more ducks than coots.

For exercise today, I went to for a long walk in another part of the Wetlands Park. Today I walked in the Las Vegas Wash area of the park. The wash in this area looks like a river, complete with rapids and mini waterfalls. There were also many more people in the park today including a Cub Scout Pack on a nature exploration hike. I still experienced large areas without seeing people, but in the wash area there were lots of people taking advantage of the good weather.

The bird life in the wash area was different than the other areas of the park I have explored. There were more ducks in this area than the American Coots I was misidentifying in the other area. I also saw a couple of Blue Herons coming in for a landing on the banks of the wash. I tried to get pictures of the herons landing with only limited success.

Blue Heron starting its decent.

Blue Heron on the final glide for landing.

Overall I took a much longer walk and spent a lot more time in the park today. I continue to enjoy this oasis in the desert. It would be interesting to see what the area is like in the spring. To bad that I didn’t know it was here during my visit to the area this past April. I need to keep the Wetlands Park in mind for future visits to Las Vegas. I don’t think that will happen until 2019 or 2020.