Mojave: Hoover Dam and Lake Mead

This is the final post of the story of our recent February trip to the Las Vegas area. We saved a trip to see Hoover Dam and Lake Mead for the final whole day in Nevada. As we left Las Vegas for Hoover Dam, we set the GPS for the Albertsons in Boulder City to purchase some water and lunch. Beyond Boulder City, there is a whole lot of nothing, no gas, no food, no water.

Before leaving Boulder City and just a mile and a half from the grocery store, we stopped at Hemenway Valley Park overlooking Lake Mead. It is also known as Bighorn Park because it is an urban location where Bighorn Sheep are known to graze. This park has everything a sheep might want: rocky slopes for protection from predators, lush green grass, and shade trees that are otherwise nonexistent in the Mojave.

Within seconds of pulling into the parking lot, we spied two rams casually grazing on the manicured and irrigated grass right beside the city street. One seemed to be a bit more skittish as we approached to about 40 yards away; the other, marked with a red ear tag, never stopped munching grass. I used my big lens to photograph them without the stress of getting closer, although many cars pulled up quite near them. I wish people would give wildlife more space.

Bighorn Rams Grazing at Hemenway Park

Is There Going to be Trouble Here?

Having sated our need to see Bighorns (we saw them at Valley of Fire and Death Valley previously), we left without looking for any others. Driving down the hill towards the lake, within minutes, we found the road narrowing and twisting, the old U.S. 93 that I remember from my prior trip from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas in which the highway ran across the top of Hoover Dam. It has since been rerouted and access from the Arizona side has been blocked, but more on that in a moment.

Quickly, we found ourselves at the Bureau of Reclamation security checkpoint which I suppose is necessary post-9/11 because Hoover Dam is a secure federal facility. At this stop, you must roll down all windows so the security officers can see in your car, and you must declare any guns or drones. The zero tolerance policy means that if you have guns, you will be turned away. It is illegal to fly drones over Hoover Dam, but it is not clear if you can have them in your vehicle. The dual rear wheel truck in front of us got referred to secondary for a search. We got passed through after speaking with the security officer.

As we wound down the steep hairpin road to the dam, we crossed under a new exquisitely arched bridge that was not there on my last visit, the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, also known as the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. This bridge that carries the new U.S. 93 and Interstate 11 would come into play in an hour or so.

Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge

After winding under the new bridge, we continued across Hoover Dam to park on the Arizona side. The Nevada parking lots are all paid as well as the very first lot on the Arizona side. If you are willing to walk a couple of minutes, all the remaining parking lots on the Arizona side are free, and we parked in one of those on the far side of the Arizona spillway.

Hoover Dam Crosses from Nevada into Arizona

On foot, we crossed the dam to the Nevada side and back. While we walked, we had lots of time to take in the strong Art Deco influence that speaks directly to the era of the bridge and the thought put into its design and adornment. I am a huge fan of Art Deco styling (think of all the coastal bridges in Oregon and the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Empire State Building in NYC of the same era as Hoover Dam).

You might not be able to take in the Deco details while driving across the dam, because keeping an eagle eye out for the scads of pedestrians or cars stopping suddenly in front of you will take priority. We saw one idiot stop suddenly on the dam and the following tour bus had to take evasive action, pulling into the oncoming lane to avoid rear-ending the stopped car.

After parking on the hill in Arizona, you will have plenty of sightseeing opportunities starting first with the four beautifully designed intake towers slightly upstream of the dam, two on each side of the river. You will also notice the graceful Deco curves of the Arizona spillway. I noted as we walked across that there are new barriers, shade canopies, and fences that were not here on my last visit, some 40 years ago. It was also obvious that the water level is significantly lower now than it was then.

From AZ, Two Intake Towers Closest to the Dam

The Arizona Spillway
Emergency Overflow in Case of High Water

Art Deco Styling Detail, Arizona Spillway

Clock Showing Arizona Time, Just After 11

Clock Showing Nevada Time, Just After 10

Desert Gold, Geraea canescens, Blooming on Nevada Canyon Wall

One of Two Deco-Styled Bronze Statues
"Winged Figures of the Republic"
Recalls Packard Hood Ornaments of the Same Era

726-Foot High Hoover Dam Face, Looking at Arizona

Elegant Spandrel Columns of the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge

Decorative Frieze on the Elevator Tower

There is a lot more to Hoover Dam than meets the eye, most of it down inside the dam itself or in the powerhouses. You can purchase tickets for guided tours, but tours are just not really our jam. We confined ourselves to what we could see from the road. As we did our own tour, Ann kept looking up at the people on the extraordinarily high bridge just downstream and urging for us to go cross it. I kept refusing; I am really afraid of heights and the bridge runs about 900 feet above the Colorado River. (So naturally our rooms in Vegas were on the 32nd and 25th floors.) Ann is the daredevil in the family. I own my fears.

On our way down to the dam, we passed a sign for the parking lot for the Hoover Dam Bridge Overlook. Not knowing that this was the access point for crossing the new bridge, something I really did not care to do, I pulled in. After a short climb from the parking lot, we found ourselves on the pedestrian walkway of the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Oops. I can say that I made it across all the way to the Arizona side and back, but I was extremely ill at ease especially when tractor trailers rolled by at minimum of 75 mph making the bridge shake. The bridge does offer exceptional views of Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam from the Bypass Bridge

Arizona Mile Zero, Center of Bypass Bridge

Love These Grasses at Hoover Dam Bridge Overlook

After having made it safely back to solid ground, we continued slightly west before turning right to climb up to the Lakeview Overlook, named quite originally for looking out over Lake Mead. From here, the sadly low water level of Lake Mead is terribly apparent when looking at the islands in the lake. A bonus for me is that I saw my first Sagebrush Sparrow running along the ground, tail erect like a wren, scurrying from one Creosote Bush to another. Unfortunately, I could not photograph it.

From Lakeview Overlook, Low Water in Lake Mead is Obvious

From here, we went to the Lake Mead Visitor Center with an eye towards hiking some or all of the Railroad Trail to pass through the tunnels of this abandoned railway. The line and its five tunnels were put in to ferry materials for the construction of Hoover Dam. We picked the warmest day of the year so far, so we opted not to hike the Railroad Trail because it has no shade and it was already pushing the mid-80s when we arrived. Others had no such qualms; the trailhead parking lot was almost full.

While we were at the Visitor Center, we did walk through the decimated cactus gardens around the building. The lack of water in recent years has killed so much of what was a beautiful garden. The drought even has killed a lot of mesquites and that is a hard thing to do.

Great Plains Prickly Pear, Opuntia polyacantha

Beavertail Prickly Pear, Opuntia basilaris

Ocotillo, Fouquieria splendens

Ocotillos Are One of My Desert Favorites

Common Side-Blotched Lizard

A Pair of White-Winged Doves

Desert Gold, Geraea canescens

Teddy-Bear Cholla Fruit, Cylindropuntia bigelovii

Tree Cholla, Cylindropuntia acanthocarpa

Mojave Yucca, Yucca schidigera

Desert Mallow, Sphaeralcea ambigua

After stopping at the Visitors Center, I had thought we might make a tour of the north side of Lake Mead along Lakeshore Road. From the Visitors Center we could see that Boulder Beach, where we thought we might visit, was not terribly inviting. We skipped it as it kind of seemed pointless. It was hot and we were tired after nearly a week from home and to be honest, after seeing the gorgeous scenery along Northshore Road earlier in the week, Lakeshore was looking like a bust. We made a quick stop at 33 Hole Overlook that did not inspire us. We continued up to the Las Vegas Bay Overlook to see the nearly dried up Las Vegas Wash/Bay, now perhaps a tiny wet spot with some green shrubs.

Las Vegas Bay Seems to be Missing

It was early, perhaps 12:45pm, when we threw in the towel without ever really voicing that this is what we were doing. At our final stop, I suggested skipping the lunch that we bought in Boulder City and reversing our meal plans for the rest of the day. For dinner, we had planned to eat at Shang Artisan Noodle back in Las Vegas. Instead, I suggested we have a late lunch there and then just dine in on our lunch food back at our hotel for dinner. That idea seemed to resonate with Ann. We were both tired.

It was a quick trip through Henderson back to Vegas and soon enough, we found Shang on the corner of a totally generic strip mall. I was shocked when I stepped inside how nicely the interior is appointed and how busy it was. We were some of the very few non-Asians in the restaurant where we took seats at the bar facing the glassed-in kitchen. We watched one cook hand tossing noodles and we watched the other shaving knife-cut noodles into massive pots of rapidly boiling water. It was a great show with our late lunch. I much prefer knife-cut noodles to hand-tossed noodles.

Handmaking Noodles at Shang

Spicy Knife-Cut Noodles with Pork Belly

Spicy Hand-Tossed Noodles with Beef

Pork Dumplings

Two bowls of noodle soup and an order of dumplings was way too much food, so we combined the remains of both soups and took it back to the hotel, where we ate it for dinner. Our original lunch food, we saved for lunch tomorrow before heading to the airport. Back at the hotel, we packed most of our stuff and did not go back out. We did nothing but relax that evening and I caught up on some notes from which I wrote these blog posts.

Tuesday morning I awoke after another 8 hours of sleep on a night before travel. Will miracles never cease? We spent a lazy morning with terribly weak host-supplied coffee of the hot brown water ilk. I took a few more parting shots of Vegas.

New York Las Vegas

Final Shot of The Strat and The Sphere

After eating our lunch saved from yesterday, we started for the airport. Filling up with gas, returning the rental car, security, boarding, and the flight back to Seattle all went like clockwork. We had a beautiful sunset descending into SEA and a temperature shock as we debarked. I put on my jacket for the first time in a week. Getting back to Redmond was a quick 36-minute flight with boarding, taxiing, and deplaning taking far longer than the actual flight. It was so good to hit the shower and our own bed. If nothing else, travel surely makes you happy to be home.

Mojave: "O" at Cirque du Soleil

On our final Death Valley morning, like yesterday morning, we opted for coffee and a quick breakfast in the motel lobby before starting our trip back to Vegas where we had a full day planned. During breakfast, Fox News was playing on the TV and the majority of guests were lapping it up. What a perverse take on news they broadcast!

As we left breakfast, we did not yet know that our plans for the morning were going to hell. Walking back from coffee in the motel lobby, I noticed our left rear tire was flat with an obvious drywall screw in the tread. The choices were call Avis, limp the small spare into Pahrump, the nearest city where something might be open on a Sunday morning, or find someone local. As we climbed the stairs to our room to consider our options, we found yet another cat keeping an eye on our room.

Our Room was Perfectly Safe from Mice

I called the Avis emergency number to find out that I would be out of pocket for all the expenses for repairing the tire, $130 call-out fee plus whatever the service charged for repairs, if it could be repaired roadside. I wasn't interested in paying through the nose or waiting hours for somebody to show up, so I went to the front desk and asked about a local who could perhaps do the job early on a Sunday morning. They referred me to Revert’s 24-hour Tires situated not 50 yards away and directly across the street.

We Did Not Plan a Trip to the Tire Shop

I called the cell number that the front desk gave me. James told me he had a $85 call-out fee for opening the shop on a Sunday. I agreed and we agreed to meet at 8:45 at his shop across the street. I limped the car to the shop, but he did not arrive until 9:25. I was willing to cut him a lot of slack; I may have awakened him at 8:15 on a Sunday, his day off. Plugging a tire is a quick process and he was done quickly. He only charged us $40 and waived the $85 call-out fee because he was late. I protested but he would not take any more money. He turned out to be another friendly local as were all the folks we met in Beatty. Twenty minutes later we were headed into Death Valley, seeing still more burros roadside on the way out of town.

The flat tire killed most of the slack in our schedule for seeing more sights in Death Valley National Park on our return to Vegas. We ended up making a hit and run at Harmony Borax works because it sits right on the highway. The major reason for people coming to this forsaken land was to mine borax ore and it is worth understanding a bit of that history. Looking at the clock as we were pulling back onto the highway, I scrapped visits to 20 Mule Team Canyon and Dante's View as they are much longer investments of time that we really did not have in our schedule.

Harmony Borax Works

Borax Boiler

Borax Ore Carts

Final Look at Death Valley Landscapes

On the way back to Nevada, we decided we had time for a sit-down lunch in Pahrump before leaving for the 2pm show at the Sphere. We arrived at Mom’s Diner in Pahrump at 11:50am, leaving 50 minutes for lunch. We were told that there was a 10-15-minute wait “if that.” The wait turned out to be 25 minutes. We ordered as soon as we sat down and the food arrived 20 minutes later, leaving five minutes to bolt our food before leaving for Vegas. So much for a sit-down lunch!

Mom's Diner in Pahrump

We Had Five Minutes to Bolt Our Lunch

It's an easy drive into Vegas from Pahrump and we made it without any issues until traffic started piling up on I-15 right at Allegiant Stadium, home of the Oakland Raiders. Did I say Oakland? Oops. As we pulled off the interstate and tried to cross the Strip to get to The Sphere, traffic was beastly and there were cops everywhere, four cars at least at every intersection. Ultimately, we found an appropriate parking lot for our pre-paid parking pass and followed the crowd into the largest spherical building in the world.

I did not know what to expect at The Sphere, except for perhaps an IMAX film on steroids. But everyone with whom I spoke to about Vegas before our trip urged me to go see a show there. On entering the spherical building, we felt a little queasy as we walked across the polished black floor that reflected neon ceiling lighting back at us. And the lighting moved with each step causing a bit of dysphoria.

Next up was getting to our seats, center stage, but on the 400 level, way up at the top of the building. Getting there involves very long rides on very tall escalators, many of them. Did I mention yet that I am very afraid of heights? My stomach was definitely wobbling when we reached our level and then had to head down the steps to our row. I had to fight the idea I might just tumble down and right over the railing, but that feeling was not as bad as I experienced watching the Sugar Bowl at the New Orleans Superdome.

Right at 2:00pm, Darren Aronofsky's “Postcard from Earth” kicked off and the first five minutes were largely a snoozer. I have seen a lot of much better IMAX shows. I was thinking that we had wasted a lot of money; tickets are really expensive. Then... Holy Crap! The screen broadened out gradually to take in the entire visible ceiling. If it had jumped from tiny letterbox format to the entire screen at once, people would have puked. And then the entire building shook, thanks to shaker chairs and a massive sound system, as a spacecraft roared across the screen.

That shaking, like an earthquake, for someone who is scared of heights was a bit scary, but I soon got into it. During the performance, the ventilation system was used to amplify wind, fog, and even waft some smells into the air. The animations were quite good and in extremely high resolution, but the film script was mediocre. While the visual and audio technology is amazing, the problem of giving everyone a perfect view on a spherical screen is nearly impossible to solve mathematically. I noted lots of barrel distortion especially with horizontal and vertical lines such as trees or horizon lines. I felt like I needed to go into Photoshop and apply some lens corrections. Still, it was quite like nothing I have ever experienced before. Mind blown!

My mind was also blown by the vast number of people in the audience who were videoing the film on their phones. I guess I should not be surprised, but if I pay that much for an event, I want to be present and take it all in.

The Sphere

The Initial View, Not Very Impressive

After the View Expanded, So Impressive!

As bad as traffic was getting to The Sphere, it worse getting to our hotel at the MGM Towers on Harmon, just off the Strip. We arrived there at 4:30. When we inquired at the front desk as we were checking in, we found out that a marathon was being held on the Strip and it started at 4:30. We left our car with the valet, got ourselves installed in our room, and headed for a quick and highly refreshing shower.

At 5:30, we started out for The Bellagio where we were to see Cirque du Soleil’s “O” at 7:00pm. The nearer we came to the Strip where the Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Marathon was in progress, the more we had to battle hordes of people, a scene reminiscent of Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Naturally, all the kids were impeding sidewalk traffic with faces buried in their phones or filming content for their vast legion of followers. If you detect sarcasm in that last clause, your detector is perfectly calibrated. We took the flyover bridge over Las Vegas Boulevard into The Cosmopolitan and then through their casino down to the sidewalk leading next door to The Bellagio.

Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Marathon

About to Enter The Bellagio, Paris Las Vegas Across Street

The Bellagio is set a good distance off the Strip with the pools for its famed fountains in between the hotel and the street. You take a long elevated walkway under a colonnade to get to the lobby and that walkway gives great views of the fountain pool.

Just as we walked into the massive entrance to the Bellagio, we were immediately wowed by the colorful glass display on the ceiling called Fiori di Como, one of Dale Chihuly’s most famous pieces. We walked under it past the hotel check-in desk and into the Conservatory which is renowned for its seasonal living flower displays. While I appreciated the artistry and care of the current design celebrating Lunar New Year, I was not was not sufficiently wowed to take photos.

Chihuly's Fiori di Como

The second thing we noticed in the Bellagio was that it reeked of cigarette and cigar smoke. And despite it being illegal, we smelled weed everywhere on the casino floor. I had forgotten or perhaps I never knew that in Nevada, you can smoke in bars and casinos.

Our plan was to grab a quiet cocktail or two and relax before the show. I assumed incorrectly, it seems, that such a luxury hotel would have a quiet bar with decent craft cocktails. First, there is no quiet anywhere near the casino floor. And second, all the bars were jammed and turning people away.

We finally found two seats at a video poker bar where we could sit and have a drink before the show. We watched people drinking Bud Light while staring sullenly into their video poker machines, robotically pushing buttons. We ordered a bottle of Champagne and as we were drinking it, Ann said, “I’d rather be in the Happy Burro in Beatty drinking shitty beer than sitting here drinking Champagne.”

“O” was, of the many Cirque du Soleil shows I have seen, without any question, the best. The static location at The Bellagio has let them build a set that would be nearly impossible to transport for their mobile, tent-based shows. Ann got us fourth row center stage tickets for which we paid handsomely but which were so worth it. The three acts were each fabulous and I could not believe that 90 minutes went by so quickly.

After the show that ended far too soon, we wandered out front to watch the famed fountains go off in the pool outside The Bellagio. I have now ticked that off my list and I never have to do it again. By this point, we were ravenous, so we set out in search of something decent to eat, a fruitless quest it turned out.

As we walked through The Cosmopolitan earlier, we spied the Vegas branch of Momofuku, where we hoped to get a decent bowl of ramen. Sadly, they were closed for a private event but the host recommended we try China Poblano just down the hall for ramen. The José Andrés fusion concept sounded promising, especially because we loved eating at Jaleo and Zaytinya when we lived in the DC area. They too were closed for an event and only serving to-go food.

Back out on the street, we turned to Google Maps for a survey of the restaurants nearby and I saw Eataly in the Park MGM. I assumed, wrongly, that we could at least have a decent bowl of pasta there in one of their concepts. If not, at least we could get a panino or two. Their pasta restaurant was open and we were seated quickly even though the place was fairly full.

Now that it is owned by UK-based investment bankers, it really sucks and was nothing like what we expected it to be. To start, our service was confused to lackluster and our server had too little knowledge of her menu and ingredients. We started with ‘nduja arancini which we found boring with almost no ‘nduja. Moreover, they came to the table before our bottle of wine arrived. I do not expect the A team on Sunday night, but I do not expect the staff to be asleep either.

Our pasta was better than mediocre but not by much. Ann’s pappardelle was cooked well, but the mushroom sauce tasted like Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, though it was full of beech and other mushrooms. Most damningly, it lacked any seasoning. The sauce for my cavatelli was the classic sausage and rapini but it had no flavor and resembled no version of this pasta that I have ever made or eaten. It contained tiny little bits of rapini and a watery green sauce with no herbs, spices, or even salt. The sausage was pointless and tasteless. And in a first for a chef who complains frequently about seriously overcooked pasta, my cavatelli was made well, but taken to the al dente extreme, three minutes shy of being ready to plate and a minute shy of being chewable. Thank God there was wine.

'Nduja Arrancini, Rice and No 'Nduja

Seriously Undercooked Cavatelli, Watery Weak Sauce

Nice Pappardelle, Tasting of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom

At least the food, even if it did set us back an arm and two legs, killed our hunger. We left quickly after eating, it being quite late for us. We took a few night photos of the Strip as we walked back to our hotel where we got to bed around midnight.

This is the Best Thing I Saw on The Sphere