2014XC: Day 24, July 5 – Boulder City, Nevada – Hoover Dam (Callville Bay Trailer Village, Lake Mead)

I sat on the doorsteps of the camper around 4:30am to try and get some of the only breeze available outside. I waited for the sun to come up and then I went back to sleep – I don’t know why. I don’t think any of us got more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep with the heat. It was like musical beds all night long, each of us trying to find a cooler spot in hopes to get some sleep. I think it was already 100 degrees by 7:00am. Steve had gone to get things worked out with our reservations, so as soon as he returned we packed up and moved our camper to a campground across the road, the one with the hookups. We languished in the AC for a while and had breakfast, then we left for Hoover Dam. It was laid out nice for visiting.

We did the “Power Plant” tour, which included a 10 minute video of how it came to be, then a trip in an elevator down to the tunnels where the original 30ft pipes were in place to re-route the Colorado River while they were building the dam…

then back in the elevator and halfway back up to the area where the “generators” were…

and finally back up for a walk through the museum…

Back outside too see the Dam and the bridge, and the other Visitor Center to see a model of the layout of the land that is affected by the Hoover Dam…

Quite an engineering feat. It’s inspiring to see things like this. We headed back towards the campsite as we rounded Boulder Lake swimming area at Lake Mead. We tried to go swimming but it didn’t work out. It is a swimming area, but we found out that the Lake was 50ft below it’s normal level, and that meant a great distance of rocks and barnacles to go over and stand in while in the lake. If we had all brought watershoes, it would have worked out better. So we just went back to a camper full of AC and chilled out until bedtime!