Wandering West, Day 6, Tuesday, June 29
Today we left Grand Canyon National Park and traveled 276 miles northwest to Las Vegas. It was a travel day so that didn’t leave much time for many adventures but we still managed to take advantage of our route and saw an engineering marvel on the way, the Hoover Dam.
You can probably already imagine all the jokes going around, after all, we have a bunch of teenage boys and their dads….”Where’s the dam parking?”, “Where’s the dam bathroom?”, and on and on. I even heard one of the kids say to another at one point that the joke was old, time to stop…LOL! We also played some Hoover Dam trivia over our two-way radios between cars along the way. All the guided tours are still closed (stupid Covid) so we were trying to brush up on our history before getting there.
All kidding aside though it was a pretty cool stop. The drive coming into Nevada was also very pretty. I guess I never realized how mountainous Southern Nevada is. There are still hardly any trees (we’re in the desert after all), but the mountains are beautiful. What was even more mesmerizing, and honestly a bit freaky, was the storm we watched ahead of us as we were approaching Boulder City. We could see the rain falling miles ahead of us and we watched lighting as it was striking whatever was there. We had a time-lapse rolling at the time so I’m hoping we got some cool video of it.
Getting three campers plus two cars into the facility was a bit nerve-wracking for me but didn’t seem to faze Johnny at all. He had done his research and knew exactly what to expect, he’d even already “driven” the route on the Google Maps street view. You’ve got to love modern technology. So, after getting through security then getting everyone parked at the very top parking lot we used our extra cars to taxi everyone down the massive hill to see the dam.
And it is most definitely a sight to see! It’s another one of those places that pictures just don’t do justice to. The kids were all amazed that when you pour water out at the top, it flies back at you instead of down. Honestly, I was pretty amazed by that too. We were able to walk around everything outside and even though the tours are closed, they did have the Visitor Center open where you could watch a 20-minute movie about how the dam was built and its purpose. Unfortunately, Jaci, Scott, & Halli missed that part because Halli was trying to take down the dam with some craft scissors she had in her bag. For real though, security was pretty tight. We had to go through a checkpoint coming in, where security guards checked our campers, then before entering the Visitor Center you have to go through metal detectors. So, they wouldn’t let Halli in with those scissors that were only in her bag for making friendship bracelets, and on top of that Scott had several Gatorades, which apparently were also a no-no. They could have thrown them all away and come on in but they decided to continue enjoying the outside of the facility instead. So, learn from us, remember to take your “weapons” and colored liquid out of your bag before going in. LOL!
Also, it was HOT! We had a 40-degree temperature change in about a 3-hour time frame. It was around 60 degrees at one point on our drive and by the time we arrived at Hoover Dam the temperature had risen to over 100!! I think we’re going to get our heatwave now after enjoying such unseasonably cool temps in Arizona.
We pulled into the Oasis RV Resort in Las Vegas this evening with the intention of cooking dinner, doing some laundry, and talking about plans for the next two days. Well, mother nature had other plans. As I type this, the wind is blowing so fiercely outside that you can hardly open your eyes without sand blowing into them and we are under a flash flood warning, though it hasn’t rained yet. So instead we all figured out dinner with our respective families and have spent our evening inside. Now, we still had to get that laundry done. When you’ve been on the road for six days with a family of five you no longer have places to stuff the dirties (and the smell is not so great either).
We are still not 100% on what will be on tomorrow’s agenda. What we do know is that it will be fun!!