Hoover Dam is only about a 30 minute drive from Vegas and has been on Allthego’s bucket list to see.

View of Lake Mead from Information Centre

We have never seen a real Roadrunner, this one is stuffed.

This was a seriously big dam to first plan and then build it back in the 1920/30s. It broke many records and developed new engineering techniques. The Dam wall acted as the roadway from Route 93 which connects Las Vegas  and Phoenix in Arizona. It was a real traffic bottleneck and lead to the construction of the bypass bridge. This bridge has a walkway for tourists to stroll along looking down into the Colorado River and across to the Dam wall itself. It’s a great view. You can then look back from the Dam wall to the bridge and down the Dam wall to the river far below.

Hoover Dam taken from the overpass bridge, the shadow of which is on the Dam wall

The Colorado River dammed up behind the wall to form Lake Mead.

Looking down the Dam wall, the Colorado below and the overpass bridge.

Lake Mead behind the Dam wall is well below its historic high points which are marked by the white canyon walls. One suspects it will never reach these levels again because of the demands for water from Vegas and the surrounding agricultural regions. This and the 3 other dams on the Colorado have certainly tamed the river. Now a bit over 80 years old one wonders whether it would have been  built in today’s environmental times. We left the Dam and drove around Lake Mead’s edge heading for Zion National Park for the night. This was  a great drive along the Park road through the  bad lands type desert environment.

Desert Landscape on our way to Zion NP.

Lake Mead again from further up the flooded valley.

The Nevada police are very nice chaps alerting Allthego to the 25 mph speed limit through one of the small towns along the way. He was so friendly he advised us to visit one particular desert park on our return trip. We thanked him for his advice and slowly moved on.

Its getting colder as we head further north and to higher altitudes in Utah. Nice and warm in our Best Western at La Verkin about 20 miles from Zion NP.