Prowl'n America: Hoover Dam

Nov. 23, 2018

Spending most of our time out in the boonies like we have recently, you kind of loose touch with the rest of the world. This is important for the rest of the story.

After spending Thanksgiving at Poverty Flats, we headed south through the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The North Shore road is a destination unto itself. Terrific scenery with lots of pull outs, most with hiking opportunities.

The RedStone (RedStone.pdf) pull out is like a mini Valley of Fire State Park with lots of large red Rocks to climb on and hike through.

Our destination, Bolder Beach campground.

After lunch we headed toward Hoover Dam. About 1½ miles out the traffic slowed to a crawl, it took us an hour to get to the dam! Apparently everyone in Las Vegas had the same idea. The first obstacle was the security checkpoint. You can still drive over the dam so every vehicle has to be scrutinized. Of course our truck with all the bins in the back warranted extra scrutiny. The security check was relatively quick and didn’t hold us up long. Then there was the parking. There’s a multi level parking garage that cost $10. We started to pull in (thinking all parking cost $10) then thought we probably wouldn’t fit, good thing we didn’t. There’s RV parking on the other side of the dam so we headed for that. As we crossed the dam we saw the “Maddening Hordes” lined up for the tours and realized it wasn’t worth it. We still had to go with the flow till we could find a place to turn around.

On the way out we tried for a Lake Mead overlook but again, no parking. Cutting our losses we headed back to the campground. I’d already dreamed up a title for the Blog post, “Hoover Dam, almost!”.

That evening Joan did some research and discovered that the Thanksgiving weekend is the busiest of the year. After sleeping on it we came up with a plan B. There’s a large parking area across from the Hoover Dam Casino just west of the road to the dam. We’d break camp early, park the camper across from the Casino, get to the dam, park and be in line before the first tour started at 9:00 am. This time all went according to plan. We saw and did everything we wanted and were on our way out as the “Maddening Hordes” were arriving for another day of chaos. After a relaxing lunch in our camper, across from the Casino, we were off to our next destination.

Pictures from our visit to Hoover Dam...

Lake Mead is 55 ft. below normal..

Cylindrical building is visitors center and observation deck, stepped building in background is the parking garage, both were completed in 1995.

Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge opened in 2010. Prior to then ALL traffic heading south east toward Phoenix passed over the dam causing multi hour delays.