Coast to Coast Road Trip USA with Young Children by Samuel J. Swayne

Author:Samuel J. Swayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781481844
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing
Published: 2013-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

11

California

Las Vegas is very close to the Hoover Dam and the lake it creates, Lake Mead. I was very keen to see the Hoover Dam because I had read and seen a lot about its construction so would be able to cast my ‘expert’ eye over this marvel of civil engineering. Just before you get to the dam there is a security check where all vehicles must stop and are searched by armed men with dogs. We even had to open Moby’s storage underneath and one officer poked his head inside to see if we were carrying a thermonuclear device or anything similar. We passed the inspection and were on our way.

The dam is on the Nevada and Arizona state line, so we drove over the dam and into Arizona where the clocks changed. There were several car parks and most of them full so we parked Moby up in one of the furthest ones and walked down towards the dam to have a closer look. It was a very hot day again and approaching noon, so doubly hot. I actually expected the dam to look a bit bigger than it is, it didn’t really seem to be that much bigger or so much more impressive than the dam we saw further up the Colorado river which creates Lake Powell, but maybe I had just become so accustomed to these great works of civil engineering that I was now harder to impress. Many of the adjoining structures to the main dam have been built in an ‘art deco’ style which includes the beautifully detailed and air-conditioned toilets located right on the top of the dam. When I took Erik to the toilet, Lucie was looking down onto the dry side of the dam and saw a large group of suited men in black cars. The group went inside the dam and Lucie wondered who they were and what they were doing there. A few minutes later she overheard a family talking to one of the dam engineers, they seemed to be surprised and amazed with what he was saying, so when the man left Lucie couldn’t help but ask what they were talking about. The people told Lucie that the dam employee told them that the group of suited men was President Obama and his ensemble. About half an hour later we saw the group of black cars leaving, so we may have seen President of the United States. Cool.

We walked around on top for a while longer, I would have loved to do one of the tours into the dam but as usual this was not to be, but that’s the life we chose in having children.

We walked back up the steep hill in the terrible heat to Moby and went to find a campground near Lake Mead. Lake Mead is part of the same river system as Lake Powell so we hoped it would be similar, with sand and clear water. We found a campground that was in the national recreation area around Lake Mead and promised Erik a swim.

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