On Sunday while in Vegas, Lynne, Carol, and I took a road trip to Hoover Dam. It was 65 degrees, sunny, and beautiful! It was also a nice change of pace from the crowds on the strip. On the way, we stopped at the Lake Mead NRA Visitor's Center, and I got a couple stamps in my National Park passport, a patch for my backpack, and some prickly pear cactus jelly. Yum!
Lake Mead:
This is a dangerous cactus garden!
About 4 miles before you get to Hoover Dam, you see all kinds of funny signs about how slow traffic is...and they were right! There is a security checkpoint about a mile before you get to the dam, so traffic was moving at less than 25 mph. it took about 30 minutes to go the last 4 miles!
The highway over the dam (going from Nevada to Arizona) is very curvy with many switchbacks, and of course, you have all the traffic from tourists visiting the dam, so if you are just trying to drive cross-country, it can be frustrating! They are currently building a new highway for the non-tourist traffic. We could see the completed parts of the highway as we were driving, and it is a nice, straight, 4 lane road. The bridge over the canyon is not quite done yet, but it looks pretty cool!
You can see all the platforms on the posts of the bridge. They also had huge cranes rigged up on both sides. After they built the arcs, they are putting on the highway, starting from the middle.
Michelle asked my why we wanted to leave the strip for a day to see the dam, and I said, "Because it is the most impressive feat of human engineering in the USA. And because it supplies most of the power for the western half of the United States." Pretty impressive! I read that the Hoover Dam is taller than the St. Louis Arch, the Eiffel tower, and the Pyramids!
Here is a great view of the new bridge from on top of the dam.
There are two copper statues like this, and they were the heaviest statues in the nation when they were put there. They brought them in on huge block of ice, and centered them in the correct location as the ice melted.
This is a dangerous cactus garden!
About 4 miles before you get to Hoover Dam, you see all kinds of funny signs about how slow traffic is...and they were right! There is a security checkpoint about a mile before you get to the dam, so traffic was moving at less than 25 mph. it took about 30 minutes to go the last 4 miles!
The highway over the dam (going from Nevada to Arizona) is very curvy with many switchbacks, and of course, you have all the traffic from tourists visiting the dam, so if you are just trying to drive cross-country, it can be frustrating! They are currently building a new highway for the non-tourist traffic. We could see the completed parts of the highway as we were driving, and it is a nice, straight, 4 lane road. The bridge over the canyon is not quite done yet, but it looks pretty cool!
You can see all the platforms on the posts of the bridge. They also had huge cranes rigged up on both sides. After they built the arcs, they are putting on the highway, starting from the middle.
Michelle asked my why we wanted to leave the strip for a day to see the dam, and I said, "Because it is the most impressive feat of human engineering in the USA. And because it supplies most of the power for the western half of the United States." Pretty impressive! I read that the Hoover Dam is taller than the St. Louis Arch, the Eiffel tower, and the Pyramids!
Here is a great view of the new bridge from on top of the dam.
There are two copper statues like this, and they were the heaviest statues in the nation when they were put there. They brought them in on huge block of ice, and centered them in the correct location as the ice melted.
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