Hoover Dam

Even though we had a long drive to Tucson, we did a bit of sighteing at Hoover Dam before leaving Lake Mead.  The Dam is quite an engineering miracle that I remember reading about in my “Weekly Reader” in 5th grade.

We first stopped at the Lakeside overlook to view the lake from a different direction.  We could also see the railroad tunnels that were drilled so material could be brought in to build the dam.

Next stop was the overlook of the memorial bridge that was built to by-pass the old road that took Route 93 across the dam.  The old two lane road was a bottleneck to traffic traveling from Las Vegas to Phoenix.  At times, two hour delays were experienced.

Finally, we drove across the dam and admired the Art Deco styling of the elevators, restrooms, and walkways.  We didn’t have time for a tour, but plan to return here for a longer stay with some hiking in the area.

Our drive down Route 93 took us through a variety of terrain.  The mountain views right after the dam are spectacular.  Later we drove through an area with Joshua Trees that were bigger and more branched than any we saw in Joshua Tree NP and were also in flower.  There were also rock piles reminiscent of those we saw in the national park.  Near Kingman, just after the pass, the scenery changed once again as dikes and mesas appeared.  We were surprised and pleased as we approached Phoenix to see quite a few flowers and lots of green.  Spring is here.

We we’re not near a park or BLM when it was time to stop for the night so we pulled into the Wild Horse Pass Casino.  They have a parking area for RVs and trucks, but it turned out not to be too nice.  There were more trucks than RVs and most of them ran their engines overnight.  Certainly not the nice experience we had had at the casino south of Yuma.

-- Janet (text) and David (photos)