Hoover Dam, Nevada

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Finally, I can say that I've been to Las Vegas. Well, it has never been a preferred destination of mine, but as a gateway to the gems of the South West...sure!

We landed just before noon, then headed over to the rental car center via shuttle bus. I think it's not a bad idea to have all rental car companies under one roof. You can never get lost trying to find your rental car company. Since we traveled on budget, we went with one of the cheapest rental car companies I had found online. It took us for a little over half an hour just to pick up the car, much slower than we had anticipated. However, good thing was there was a discount for an upgrade; so we took them up on that because....really it was more comfortable to be in a Camry than a Hyundai compact.

Hoover Dam was roughly 40 minutes southeast of Las Vegas. We stopped by Subway to grasp lunch. And boy!who would think that we would end up with Subway being the best choice we found in the next 3 days at Bryce.

Once outside the airport, it all looked alien to me. All these rocks, sand, gravels, and more rocks and repeat. I felt like I was on Mars. It was so dry, so flat, and so rocky. Fortunately, it was a breezy day so I had absolutely no complain about the heat. I adjusted my watch to Pacific Time, but I'll have to do it again once we get into Arizona because we'll be in mountain time zone. So I gained 3 hours and will lose one hour on the same day just by traveling within the same country.

Once at the Hoover Dam, we bought a Dam tour which covers the less visited part in the dam:inside of the dam wall. The tour cost $30/person. Not really worth $30. We took a big elevator down about 4-5 story high, maybe. The temperature was much cooler than the ground level. We started together with the powerplant tour, then split off at the power plant section. We went through a secured gate and from that point on, we were pretty much in a tunnel inside the wall. We were taken to another smaller tunnel that they allowed us to walk into to the window which located at the end of the end of it to see the dam from there. I was quite surprised that the tour guide said that Hoover Dam is not really the biggest dam in the world. The dams in China and other places are actually bigger. I was amazed at how little humans like us were able to create something so grand such as Hoover Dam. The tour guide pointed us to look at the box that used to measure the earthquake before explaining that the dam was built to withstand up to magnitude of about unit 8 before it shows minor damages. If that's true, that's pretty amazing.

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Photos

Hoover Dam
Powerplant

Hoover Dam
part of the Dam Tour is getting to see the dam from the this tunnel.

Hoover Dam
new suspension bridge is being built as part of new highway system.

Hoover Dam
it's hollow.

Hoover Dam
like a tunnel.

Hoover Dam
view of the dam and the soon to be a bridge from the street level/dam wall which is also a Arizona-Nevada state line.

Hoover Dam
Doug on street level which is where we wrapped up our tour.

Hoover Dam
I think it's Nevada side...?

Leaving Las Vegas
flat and empty. On I-15 heading to Utah.