Sandoval, Krolicki ‘discover Nevada’ with Valley of Fire tour

Rick Velotta

Valley of Fire’s largest wall of petroglyphs was on the tour.

Ramona Arnold will have a great story to tell her children and grandchildren when she looks back at her honeymoon in the American Southwest. Nevada’s highest-ranking elected officials served as her personal park ambassadors.

The Lucerne, Switzerland, resident and her husband had arrived at the west entrance of Valley of Fire State Park after the entry station had already closed. Being a believer in the honor system, Arnold fished around for the right amount of cash to seal in an envelope and drop into the after-hours admission payment box.

That’s when she saw Gov. Brian Sandoval and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who had just completed a tour of the state park, the largest and oldest in Nevada. They crossed paths with Arnold while dropping off long-time park supervisor Jim Hammons before heading to the Lost City Museum in nearby Overton.

Surrounded by the red rock sandstone landscape, the state’s top government leaders dug through their wallets to try to make change for Arnold’s $20 bill. It was Krolicki who finally came up with the right combination of fives and ones.

“Have a good time!” Sandoval said, getting back into the car.

“Spend lots of money!” Krolicki added.

It was the last of several encounters Sandoval and Krolicki made with park visitors while playing tourism ambassadors, history aficionados, state administrators and road-trip buddies. The men’s “Discover Your Nevada” road trip was their second together. In May, Sandoval and Krolicki visited Pyramid Lake, north of Reno. After overnighting in Alamo on Thursday, they hit another state park, Cathedral Gorge, near Panaca on Friday.

This year, the Nevada Commission on Tourism, a division of the state’s Division of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, sponsored a public online vote to determine the state’s favorite tourism treasures. Valley of Fire earned the most votes in the Las Vegas region. Sandoval presented Hammons with a plaque commemorating the win.

Sandoval and Krolicki said their first visit to Valley of Fire was an eye-opener.

“It’s just so beautiful here,” Sandoval said from a scenic overlook. “A lot of people like to go to places like the Grand Canyon to see this kind of beauty, but there are so many residents of Las Vegas that don’t even realize this is right in their own backyard.”

Sandoval was enamored with the area’s history, spending time at the park’s visitor center displays and promising Hammons he’d come back with his family. He got up close and personal with Peanut, a common king snake, shown to him by park worker Amber Hemen while Krolicki watched warily from a few feet away.

Then the lawmakers signed Valley of Fire’s visitor registry, marveling at the dozens of out-of-state addresses that appeared in the days leading up to their arrival.

Of the more than 450,000 visitors to Valley of Fire last year, about 70 percent came from out-of-state. The 42,000-acre park has 20 miles of paved roads and is second only to Lake Tahoe State Park’s Sand Harbor as the most visited park in the 24-unit state system.

But 2 million people live within an hour drive of the park — it is about 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas off Interstate 15 — and Sandoval believes more Nevada residents should take in the attraction. The first step to increasing visitor volume is making people aware that it exists, which is why he and Krolicki made the “Discover Your Nevada” trip, hoping the exposure would generate more visits from Nevadans.

The Commission on Tourism is typically strapped for cash and hasn’t run a marketing program focused exclusively on state parks in recent memory (although the office’s tourism publication, Nevada magazine, and the agency’s website, www.travelnevada.com, frequently reference the parks). The commission has focused most recently on marketing Northern Nevada’s ski resorts and Southern Nevada’s golf courses.

The state generally works to draw tourists to rural Nevada’s tourist attractions, leaving the marketing of the large cities to the Las Vegas and Reno-Sparks convention and visitors authorities.

As for the governor’s involvement, the state’s top tourism officer said Sandoval has an energizing quality.

“I’ve seen other governors go on these types of trips,” said Claudia Vecchio, director of the Division of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, who has held tourism positions in Ohio, Iowa and Texas. “The thing that’s unusual about it is that it’s not all about him, and he’s so enthusiastic about being a tourist. He really wants to see it as a visitor.”

“I’m sure he re-energized the Valley of Fire staff,” she added. “It’s the kind of thing that generates grass-roots momentum.”

Sandoval and Krolicki also energized the tourists they met. They trekked a quarter-mile in the 105-degree heat to see the park’s petroglyphs. They snapped pictures with cellphone cameras and took photographs for a couple vacationing from North Carolina.

“How did you find this place?” Sandoval asked Kevin and Laura Finney, of Davidson, N.C.

“We Google-searched Las Vegas day trips,” Kevin said.

The governor nodded, taking mental notes before moving on to the next Nevada discovery.

Share