All photos by Travis Snelling
When I first heard the name “Pink Jeep Tours” I was a little curious what they meant by “pink”. Was it the owner’s name? Nickname? Favourite colour? It wasn’t until I saw the bubble-gum behemoth waiting for me out front of my hotel that I realized I was about to go on a tour of the Las Vegas desert in a pink Jeep with Pink Jeep Tours. Clever name.
Once boarded, our incredibly knowledgeable and friendly guide, Mark, briefed us on the Jeep. First thing’s first: it’s not really a Jeep, it’s a Tour Trekker. While Pink Jeep Tours does provide tours in pink Jeep Wranglers, what we were going to be riding in was actually a big Dodge Ram truck that’s been heavily modified to comfortably escort a group of 10 offroad into areas that would make most 4x4s cringe.
Requiring a step ladder to enter/exit the passenger cabin because of the giant wheels and ground clearance meant that if there were going to be rocks and boulders on our tour, we wouldn’t be going around them. We’d be going over them. All that ruggedness is enough to make Paul Bunyan proud, but once inside you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in a limousine. Plush leather reclining captain’s chairs, tinted windows and an air-conditioning system that could put a layer of frost on your back were it not for the searing desert heat encountered on the frequent stops.
On the short 45 minute trip from the Las Vegas strip to Red Rock Canyon, it was amazing to watch the landscape quickly change from decadent Las Vegas hotels and casinos into suburban communities and then finally into an arid desert landscape sprinkled with cactus and lined with giant red rocks and cliffs. Snaking our way through the Red Rock Canyon and further up and off road, Mark would frequently stop so we could all get out to fully appreciate the magnitude and vast expanse of the vista. Huge, ancient mountains with dramatic horizontal bands across them that meant the dry desert we were in was once underwater millions of years ago.
As we were panning around, taking in the picturesque mountain range, Mark directed our eyes to the relatively flat desert that lay at the foot of the canyons. While at first it may seem flat, that’s only in comparison to the jagged canyons they apron. Look a little closer and you realize it’s unruly terrain chock full of treacherous boulders, cactus and who knows what.
Not too far from where we stood was a set of tracks cut out and lining the subtle curves of this desert minefield. These aren’t Tour Trekker tracks, though. They’re wagon tracks from over a hundred years ago that have scarred the desert and led historians to rich deposits of settler artifacts in a place any rational person would deem both inhospitable and inaccessible.
It’s one thing to ride along the highway and see the beautiful landscape from a distance. It’s quite another to hop in a vehicle like the Tour Trekker and not only drive to that landscape, but through, up and around it. Your perspective changes and you discover places you only thought possible in movies and photos. Going offroad and feeling the truck jostle with the jagged desert, it humbles me to think what it must have felt like for those miners and settlers making their way in their rickety old wooden wagons with no shock absorbers, leather seats or air conditioning.
This place, like Las Vegas itself, is a testament to what the human spirit, fuelled by the prospect of gold, can endure.
For more information about Pink Jeep Tours, visit http://www.PinkJeep.com. The Pink Jeep Tour of Red Rock Canyon is 4hrs and costs just $94USD. Water and hotel pickup are provided and the expert guides make for a fun, informative tour. Definitely worth every penny.
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