After our Las Vegas trip, which was definitely easier to navigate in the 4Runner, we decided to take the motorcycle to our next two destinations. The weather was perfect, and the bike is fun, not to mention better on gas.
Tuesday’s trip was to Valley of Fire State Park, where I visited the last time I stayed at Lake Mead two years ago. You can read that post for all the fun details about the place. It was just as spectacular as I remember and an even more enjoyable ride on a motorcycle built more for the road than for dirt. The ride there and back was more fun as a result. While I still need to replace my back tire, we spent most of the ride leaning over into long, fast sweeping turns, so I figure we didn’t actually put much wear on the low spots of the tread.
On Wednesday we took the bike for a shorter ride to Hoover Dam. I’ve seen it twice, but Melissa never had, so we went all in on the tour and everything. But rather than spend $10 to park on the Nevada side, we parked on the Arizona side for free and took a slightly longer walk. The exercise is good for us.
The tour took us deep into the bowels of the dam. This is one of four tunnels that diverted the Colorado River around the area where the dam was built during the construction process. It’s still used from time to time today to ensure that enough water makes it past Hoover Dam to supply needs down in Arizona, California, and Mexico. We could hear and feel the rumbling beneath our feet of the massive quantity of water flowing by.
This is one set of generators used to produce power for essentially the entire southwestern US. Only three out of these eight were running at the time we were there. One was down for maintenance, and the others were turned off because the demand for power wasn’t there at the time.
This bridge, which carries US 93 across the Colorado River from Nevada to Arizona, didn’t exist during my first visit in 2000. All traffic just drove across the top of the dam, just like we did. After 9/11, security became a much bigger concern, as the destruction of Hoover Dam would have catastrophic effects. The bridge was built, traffic now bypasses the dam, and there is extensive security as you enter the area. Of course, being on a motorcycle that can’t carry enough of anything to be dangerous, they just asked if we had any weapons or drones, then sent us on our way.
After the tour, we visited the original visitor’s center, where we saw a brief automated presentation involving this model of the entire Colorado River dam system from Colorado to Mexico. This is only half the model, showing the southern half. It not only includes Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, but also Parker Dam, Lake Havasu, Blythe, Imperial Dam, and many other places I’ve visited in my travels. It was neat to see the big picture of how they all linked together and how interconnected they all were, especially having recently traveled all the way from Imperial Dam to Lake Mead. Basically, Hoover Dam makes all of the civilization below it possible, preventing the massive destructive floods that used to happen and enabling habitation and farming.
To commemorate the occasion, Melissa added this dam sticker to her 4Runner.
The reason we crammed all of these adventures into the first three days of the week was yet another wind storm hitting us at the end of the week. We packed everything up and basically stayed at camp all day yesterday, aside from a quick off-road drive to find a way to the water’s edge just to get away for a few minutes. These winds continued all night, holding steady in the 30 mph range and gusting to a recorded high of 45 mph. I didn’t get much sleep thanks to the noise and the van rocking and rolling in the wind. It eased off briefly as the sun rose, but picked right back up again. It’s supposed to finally ease off overnight. I’m just taking the opportunity to get some work done while Melissa looks for remote jobs to keep herself on the road.
Smokey Da Van 