Park 53: Lake Mead National Recreation Area (and Hoover Dam)

1/2/15. Catherine, Jason and I drove into Las Vegas from California on New Year's Day and got settled into our hotel. This morning we drove to the Hoover Dam. I had been here as a child, but Jason and Catherine had not yet seen it. We walked across the dam and admired the impressive American ingenuity and engineering. Catherine thought it was so cool that the towers looked just like those in the game Riven.


We also went up to the new Tillman Memorial Bridge and crept across, hugging the inner wall because the height is so terrifying! You can see the amazing views of the dam:

Next we drove to the Lake Mead Recreation Area, which really surprised us with the beautiful colors, especially the blue water. We stopped at the Alan Bible Visitor's Center for an overview of the geography, flora and fauna in the area (including snakes and tarantulas- yikes!!) and we got a lot of park passport stamps to add to our collection.

This area was so amazing with all the different colors in the mountains, hills, water, and shore, that we decided to take a drive around part of the lake. We headed north along the shoreline, and the scenery just got more and more beautiful.

Compared to our national park trips this summer, the weather was delightful - in the 40's most of the time, with lots of very bright sunshine.

We suspect that the drought in the southwest was the reason that the water level was so low. You could see the bands of light color where the highest water level reaches. By the time we got to the Lake Las Vegas area, there was no lake at all. The ground was extremely dry. Once again we were impressed with the rainbow of colors in the hills, canyons, and mountains in the area.

We returned to Las Vegas mid-afternoon, really pleased with our little day trip and amazed again at the beauty in the desert. This really got us excited about our trip tomorrow to Death Valley!