Early in the morning at Zabriskie Point.
¡Adiós al Valle de Muerte!
Camping in a gravel parking lot is not much of a vacationary experience, so we got up early and headed east.
Oh no, not another dam picture.
We blew through Las Vegas (getting gas next to Dean Martin Blvd.) to go straight to Hoover Dam. First, we stopped in Boulder City to visit a museum documenting the building of the dam. It was more informative than anything at the dam itself.
Lake Mead has a big bathtub ring from years of low water levels.
It was my first visit to this area since I was six years old. Our family made a trip though all the southwestern parks in 1966, so it was fun comparing my black-and-white memories with the present.
If you look closely you can see Army Rangers practicing rapelling on the dam.
The tragic events of 9/11 got the government worried about dam security. As a result many dams have been blockaded to automobile traffic—including Boca Reservoir near our house. (As if any terrorist would want to flood the Truckee River.)
Hoover gets too much use to close the highway, so a new four-lane bridge is being built about 500 feet downstream. It’s a huge project, and until it is completed Hoover remains open to traffic.
Nancy gets a charge out of generators.
We took the $11, 45-minute tour and spent most of it trying to determine which country our tour guide was from. Latvia? Albania? The Duchy of Grand Fenwick? His accent was undecipherable.
I understood about 20% of the tour spiel: something something what? TURBINES something something huh? something DIAMETER something huh? pardon? something CONCRETE something something didn’t-get-that something what? etc.
Nancy is half in Nevada and half in Arizona, which makes her Nezonian.
In other words, the Hoover Dam tour is not much of a tour. They should at least have snorkel rides through the spillways.
Mmm… macaroni and wieners.
We got out of that dam place and found a picnic spot on Lake Mead to have dinner.
We then drove for hours looking for a campsite to spend the night, but we were dissomnabulated to find that a lot of campgrounds—especially state campgrounds—are closed by late October.
Eventually, we got tired of driving around strange roads in the dark and just drove on to Zion Park, getting in near midnight.
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