Over 20,000 vehicles a day take U.S. Higway 93 over the Hoover Dam between Arizona and Nevada. This morning, Paulette, Molly and I were among them as we took the 30 minute drive from Las Vegas to Boulder City just to see the dam and Lake Mead, which was created by the damming of the Colorado River. We crossed over to the Arizona side of the Hoover Dam to park the truck and since there are no pets allowed on the dam itself, Paulette readily volunteered to stay with Molly while I walked over the dam to have a better look at everything.
The picture below shows the two intake towers on the Arizona side of the dam. The water is very, very blue - I'm not sure why it is so blue but there must be a reason.
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
On the dam, there are two lanes for traffic and wide sidewalks on each side for pedestrians. The walls on outside of the sidewalk are about waist high, so it does feel safe while walking across the dam. Here is a picture taken at the mid-point of the dam separating Nevada and Arizona.
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
The Hoover Dam contains over 4.5 million cubic yards of concrete - that's enough for a four-foot wide sidewalk around Earth at its equator. Here's a couple of views of the arched wall, on the Colorado River side, that contains a whole bunch of that concrete:
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
With 20 thousand vehicles crossing the Hoover Dam each day, it has become a bit of a traffic nightmare. Especially, when there are Homeland Security checkpoints everyone must drive through on each side of the river. To get around this, a bypass is being built to allow non-visitors avoid the Hoover Dam. The Colorado River Bridge is the central portion of the Hoover Dam Bypass Project. Here's a picture of the bridge which is nearing the point where the connection will be made high over the Colorado River.
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
A scenic by-product of the Hoover Dam is the gigantic reservoir of Lake Mead. When I retruned to the truck, we drove back over the Hoover Dam to the Nevada side and took the Lake Mead way back to Las Vegas. Along the way, there were several scenic lookouts and we stopped at a few of them.
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
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| From Hoover Dam & Lake Mead |
All in all, it was a great morning. We were heading back into Las Vegas just before noon and Paulette wanted to check out a couple of quilt shops she had found on the Internet. According to Paulette, they were both great and she managed to find a few good deals at each of them. After spending about a half hour at each store, we headed back to the Oasis RV Park.
It was about 26C this afternoon, so Paulette went for a swim in the pool - she said it was a beautiful pool and the water temperature was just perfect. I never did get to the pool today, but I'm sure I'll find some time tomorrow.As for tomorrow, it's our last day in Las Vegas, so we'll probably just do a bit more touring around.
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