22nd September
We headed out to the Hoover Dam today, which is about a half an hour journey out of Vegas when the traffic is clear, which it was for us. We’d read that it could get busy as the day went on, so decided to get out there fairly early. It was easy to get to, and by crossing over to the Arizona side of the dam we were able to get free parking, as opposed to the $7 parking on the Nevada side - bargain!
The dam wall itself is a lot shorter to walk across than I had imagined - in fact the whole wall is a lot smaller than I expected, but still amazing when you consider how long ago it was built, and what basic equipment they had to build it with. The water level in the dam is quite low at the moment - from the dam wall you can clearly see how far down it is from the markings around the hillsides behind the dam, although it’s not at the lowest level it has ever been.
We walked across the dam wall to the Nevada side where the visitor center is, and the tours operate from but didn’t do either of these, choosing instead to head back across the wall.
There is another construction project currently underway in the vicinity of the Hoover Dam which is also astounding - they are putting in a new road right next to the dam, and you get an excellent view of a new bridge they are building from the dam wall. It’s amazing how they are assembling this bridge all from overhead gantries strung across between the two canyon walls, and really emphasises what an amazing achievement the dam itself was when you see all the modern-day equipment in use for this new bypass.
We returned to the car and headed back a short distance to visit Lake Mead, the lake created by the Hoover Dam wall. This has a visitor center with information about Lake Mead (and is free to enter unlike the Hoover Dam visitor center). There is scenic North Shore road that we followed from here as we headed back towards Vegas. There were a couple of viewpoints along this route where you can get some magnificent views over Lake Mead and the surrounding mountains.
In the evening we walked back to the Strip and went to Caesar’s Palace - another massive complex and on the face of it perhaps the biggest. After finding our way through the huge casino floor to the Forum Shops we finally made it to the Cheesecake Factory where we had a delicious pasta dish each - so big that we could each only manage half of our respective dish, so had the leftovers boxed to take back to the hotel for tomorrow and didn’t manage to get to any cheesecake!