Vegas Day 4: Lake Mead & Valley of Fire

The second part of our day was a lovely drive through Lake Mead National Recreation Area on our way to Valley of Fire State Park.

It was about an hour long drive, but we stopped a few times to take in the lovely views. The mountains rising out of the water were just cool.

 We arrived at the Valley of Fire at 2 and stopped to pay the $10 fee at the east entrance. The park is famous for its red sandstone formations, which are 150 million years old. When the sun shines on them, they look on fire, hence the park's name. The area you can drive through is relatively small, so it was a good afternoon visit. Very doable. 

I most enjoyed seeing the petroglyphs here. They were created by the pre-historic Anasazi sometime between 300 BC and 1150 AD when they occupied the area. The best examples of these can be found at Mouse's Tank and Atlatl Rock.

Our first stop was at the Seven Sisters. This was probably my favorite formation as it was just on the side of the road and seemed to rise out of nowhere.

 Next, we stopped at Mouse's Tank. Here we went on a short hike. It was a little challenging as the path was all sand. My feet sunk in at every step, and I got lots of red sand in my shoes. 

This path offered some really neat up close views of petroglyphs though.

We continued north to the White Domes.

We had a great time on the scenic drive cruising in the convertible with the top down!

On our way back down, we stopped briefly at the Rainbow Vista.

Leaving the park, we stopped at Atlatl Rock. It is named after the atlatl weapon, a notched stick used to throw spears, depicted in the petroglphys.  

Here there is a tall scary metal staircase you can climb to get an up close look at the petroglyphs. I was terrified, but it was worth it.

Here's looking down from the top of the staircase -

 
 Our last stop was at the Beehives. 

Here we set up the tri-pod to get a few shots of us together.

We departed the Valley at 4 pm, while the sun was going down, for our 1 hour journey back to Vegas.

 

Interestingly, while watching Transformers last weekend we also spotted the Autobots driving through Valley of Fire. I always enjoy recognizing places I've visited in movies. I'm a dork. 

Also, I later discovered that tarantulas migrate along here in October. Good thing we didn't visit then. I would have had a meltdown.
 

Vegas Day 4: Hoover Dam

I'm slowly continuing the recap of our Vegas trip. Today is Hoover Dam, which is funny because we just saw Transformers on TV over the weekend, and a lot of the first movie takes place at Hoover Dam, which I hadn't remembered.

 

We had another busy day in store for us, so we left the hotel by 8:15. It was about a 45 minute drive to Hoover Dam. On the way, we passed by Lake Mead which offered some lovely views from the road.

 

Getting to the Visitor's Center at the Hoover Dam was a little tricky as nothing was labeled very well, but we found our way there. The Visitor's Center opened at 9, we got there around 9:30. The line to get through the airport like security was nice and short at that time.We opted for the 1 hour Dam Tour, as opposed to the 30 min PowerPlan Tour. It sounded good in theory, but in reality it was not worth the extra $19 per person. Our tour guide was awful, and more interested in talking about himself and lamenting that "kids these days don't care about history" than actually telling us about the Hoover Dam. It was extremely frustrating. 

 

We started our visit with a short ten minute video about the making and history of Hoover Dam. Since we had about 20 minutes to burn before our 10:15 tour, we went upstairs to the Observation Deck. This was our first real glimpse of the dam, and it was really neat. The thing is massive! The thing that surprised me about the place is that there are power lines everywhere. It's not exactly pretty, rather very industrial.

 

Then we joined up with our tour group and awful tour guide, Bob. We waited at the elevator for the Powerplant Tour group to meet with us, and then all squeezed in. We descended 530 feet and exited into a tunnel that was drilled in the 1930s for construction. From there, we walked to the Penstock Viewing Platform. This platform is on to one of the 30-feet wide pipes that transport water from Lake Mead to the dam's hydroelectric generators. Standing there, could feel the water rushing underneath you.

 

 We got back on the elevator, and took it up to the powerplant balcony on the Nevada side. From here, we could see 8 of the dam's 17 generators. They were huge! 

 

 

At this point, the tour split up with the PowerPlant group departing, and our smaller 20 person Dam Tour group rejoining Bob. Joy.

 

The extra part of the tour was the Inspection Galleries. We made our way through many tunnels, 

 

peeked out of an air vent over the dam, 

 

looked at some stairs that run the length of the dam (in case of emergency/unavailable elevators), and listened to Bob talk about linguistics and anything and everything EXCEPT the dam. Like I said, we saw some cool things and I'm sure the Dam Tour would have been fascinating with a good guide. For us, it was just disappointing.

 

We ended at the top of the dam. We strolled along the walkway and took lots of pictures. 

photo by Adam

   

I was surprised at how large the intake spillways were. They are designed to prevent flooding of the dam in case of high water on Lake Mead. We could see fish in them, which was quite exciting to Adam.

photo by Adam

   We also took lots of photos of the Intake Towers as they are perhaps the most picturesque aspect of Hoover Dam. 

There's Adam taking the shot below!

photo by Adam

photo by Adam

photo by Adam

 We even crossed into Arizona! Interestingly, it was a different time on the Arizona side than it was in Nevada. Arizona is in the Mountain Time Zone, while Nevada is in the Pacific Time Zone. To add to the confusion, Arizona does not use Daylight Savings Time.

 

 

The plan was to go back to the Visitor Center to check out the displays, but the line to get through security was huge, so we skipped it. Instead, we grabbed a bite to eat and sat out in the sun admiring the dam. Back at the car, we decided to drive across the dam with the convertible top down. This was well worth the time!

  
By the time we left Hoover Dam at 12:45, the line of cars to get in was backed up almost all the way to the highway. So it was definitely worth it to go right away in the morning. That line could take hours.

 

Our next adventure was to drive along Lake Mead on the way to Valley of Fire State Park.

 

A little history on the Hoover Dam -

It was built to manage the water supply and make it available year round. To make it fair for the seven states it covered, the 1922 Colorado River Compact divided the Colorado River Basin into an upper and lower half with half of the river's annual flow alloted to each basin. The states in each basin then had to divide it amongst themselves.

Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act in 1928 allowing for the construction of Hoover Dam. Construction began in 1931, and it was completed two years ahead of schedule (and under budget!) in 1935. Lake Mead is the dam's reservoir, and is the largest man-made reservoir in the world. Hoover Dam generates hydroelectric power for Nevada, Arizona and California. Yearly, it generates more than 4 billion kilowatt-hours. The sale of this power has repaid the original $165 million cost + interest of the dam's construction. It's self reliant, as revenues from the power continue to pay for the operation and maintenance of the plant.