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Today we visited Hoover Dam and walked the Las Vegas Strip. That doesn't sound like much, does it? Our feet hurt from all the walking. The irony of the situation is this: in the ecologically sensitive places we have visited like Yellowstone and Yosemite, we could drive our vehicles, park at important places, and take a short walk to see the sites. In smoggy, commercial Las Vegas, we had to walk everywhere to see the sites. We could have taken taxis, busses, or trolleys but that's costly. We could have driven our van but finding a parking space is not easy and the parking spaces are far from the attractions. The only viable option for seeing the sites is to walk walk walk. It's good for us, right?
Hoover Dam ranks as one of the seven great manmade wonders of the world. Built during the depression by a conglomeration of six companies, it was delivered two years early and fifteen million dollars under budget. The original contract allotted one hundred sixty-five million dollars over seven years. It rises over seven hundred feet from bottom to top. I had to use my wide angled lens to capture the entire dam in my camera.
The authorities added a Visitors Center (and parking garage) in 1995 that features a rotating theater. The theater is part of the tour that takes you down to the bottom of the dam. The tour includes a view of one of the gigantic pipes that channel water to the turbines. We also saw seven of the thirty or so turbines that produce the electricity. Three of the turbines are needed just for the Hoover Dam facilities. Each turbine produces enough electricity for a city with a population of a hundred thousand people. The turbines rise thirty feet above the concrete floor and we were told that each turbine goes another forty feet below the floor level. The parking garage closed just as we arrived so we had to park on the Arizona side of the dam and walk back to the Nevada side for the tour. The facilities were crowded and that surprised me. We visited on a weekday during the off season.
Hoover Dam is only thirty-six miles from Las Vegas but the trip took most of the day. We got a late start (we had to sample the breakfast buffet) and we made a few stops on the way back. One stop overlooked Lake Meade, the largest man-made lake in the world. (Perhaps it's only the largest in this country - I'm not sure.) Lake Meade filled as the result of damming up the Colorado River. It looked large but not quite impressive until I later learned that we were viewing only a small portion of the lake.
In the evening we took a stroll up The Strip. The first part of our walk took us to the basement of our own hotel where "games of skill" beckoned. I tossed a softball into a milk can and won a large stuffed dragon. We took the dragon back to our room and placed him next to the window looking out over The Strip.
We passed by a pinball exhibit (I LOVE pinball!) at the New York, New York and went to see the lions at the MGM Grand. Three lions live in a large glass-enclosed pen. The casino has provided a nice cage but workers were constantly harassing the lions with balls trying to evoke playful reactions. I never wish to be linked with the PETA extremists but the exhibit does seem abusive to the lions.
We continued up The Strip headed toward the Bellagio and Treasure Island, two separate hotels. Our map indicated that these hotels were only a couple of blocks away but we quickly discovered that our map didn't show all the streets. The (Continued on page 2)
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