I Found Out Where We Had Our Vacation!

It's amazing what you can learn once you find the right people to ask.

Back on November 8, I posted a series of photographs from a vacation my family took, probably around April 1970, when most of the photos were dated.  Some photos were at picnic tables, some by a tent, some by a lake, and some of different family members standing in front of rock formations.

I still remember that we visited Lake Mead when I was young, so that was my guess for the lake in the photos.  But I had no idea where the rock formations could be.  I threw the question out to anyone looking at the blog post.

No one posted any comments on the blog, but I did get several comments on my Facebook page.  One in particular, from my cousin's wife, suggested that the rocks might be at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.  So I looked it up online, found an e-mail address for questions, and sent a link to my blog post, asking if anyone there could tell me if the photos were taken at Red Rock.

The person who first received my message said he would forward it to people at Red Rock to look at.  It took a couple of weeks, but a very nice person from Red Rock responded and said the photos didn't look like Red Rock, but maybe they were at Valley of Fire State Park, also in Nevada.  He sent me the URL for Valley of Fire's site.

So I visited the Valley of Fire site, found an e-mail address there to send questions to, and went through the same routine.  This person thought the photos did look like Valley of Fire, and he said he would forward them to staff at the park to see if they could find the locations.

This time I waited much longer.  I realized after three months that I had never heard anything back, so I sent a follow-up message.  My contact said he would poke the staff at Valley of Fire.

Three days later, a message came from a new person, someone at Valley of Fire.  She said yes indeed, those photos sure did look like they were at her park, and she was going to ask some staff members to try to find the locations.

And two days after that, woo hoo!  Not only did they find all three locations, they took photos of them while holding up printouts of my photos from 1970!  Look what they sent me:

First we have the photo of the Toyota station wagon, and then just the rock formation.

Here's the photo of my father, and next the same rock formation without the photo.

Last but not least, the photo of the three of us kids being held up in front of the same rocks, and the rocks by themselves.

And now I know that all of these photos were taken in the Seven Sisters picnic area at Valley of Fire State Park.  Since there were photos of us sitting at a picnic table, I'm guessing that table was not far from the rock formations.  I hope that the picnic tables from 1970 have been replaced by now, although I'm amazed that the rocks look almost exactly the same as they did 55 years ago.  I know geologic time is slow, but I would have expected more erosion.

It's almost exactly 55 years ago, in fact.  I realized that we probably took this vacation during Easter break (yes, back then, before political correctness, it was Easter break, not spring break as it's now called), because my parents weren't really big on having us miss school unnecessarily.  Looking at the calendar for 1970, Easter fell on March 29 that year.  If I remember correctly (it has been a while, after all), Easter break was the week before Easter, so we would have been there during the week leading up to March 29.  And that was just last Saturday.  If Easter break came after Easter itself, then it's 55 years ago this week.

I'm so stoked that I was able to identify the locations for these photos, and also figured out when!  Next up, I think I'll see if the people at Lake Mead National Recreation Area can tell me where at the lake those photos were taken (the person who sent me the URL for Valley of Fire also sent me the one for Lake Mead).  I'm feeling lucky.

And I did receive permission to post these photos on my blog (because of course I asked; I didn't take the photos, so I don't own the copyright).  I'm still waiting on an answer from the park interpreter on whether she wants name credit for the photos.

Addendum, April 1, 2025:  The park interpreter has decided she wants to stay anonymous.  But I gave her a big thank you for helping me solve my mystery!