We packed out the house this morning and it looks admirably not like eleven climbers let a bomb go off inside of it. Small groups left, one at a time, until it was just me, my two passengers, and an imperial ton of luggage. We almost had to tie someone to the roof, but it all fits barely with just enough room to pull up one seat in the back.
As we barreled through Henderson, Mike suggested we make a quick stop at the Hoover Dam overlook, which, well… I haven’t done since we tried and got kicked out back in 2017.
Lake Mead is incredibly low. But it did give a pretty cool view of the dam and the spill towers behind it. Mike put it interestingly, “even 100 years later, this still looks big.”
Hoover Dam was built in the early 1930s. So many engineering feats from almost a hundred years ago seem to have been dwarfed by what has sprung up since. And here it is, less than 50 miles from The Strip, a monument to colossal architectural absurdity that seems to bulldoze anything older than I am and replace it with something even bigger. And yet, Hoover Dam still looks really big.
I didn’t realize you can drive over the dam, so we did! It looked like there was an exit from the park area back onto US-93. And… well… there is, but it’s barricaded and Google Maps seemed to not know that… (this is becoming a theme). So we drove back and out the Nevada exit to the highway. So while Red never got to drive over the dam, at least now Xterra the Younger and I have. Twice.
Anticlimactic, but perhaps a fair warning of how today would go: in Kingman, Arizona where US-93 dumps into I-40, we sat in creeping traffic for almost 45 minutes. Never again with this stupid route.
About ten straight hours later, we’re back in Albuquerque. But this time we’re at the Hampton Inn across the highway from the Armed Security Extended Stay, so it’s better. Unfortunately, tomorrow at work is already looking dicey. I feel a disturbance in The Force, but have yet to summon the courage to re-enable work email service to my phone…