Monday 23 September 2024

Monday 23 September

Hoover Dam

On Monday we checked out of Circus Circus early (after Elizabeth took a work call) and got onto the road. We were heading to the North Rim Lodge, where I had made dinner reservations for us for both Monday and Tuesday evenings (it's the only sit-down restaurant on the much more modest North Rim). We got a bit confused about time zones, though, as Las Vegas is on Pacific Time, but the Canyon is on Mountain - but not all of Arizona observers Daylight Savings, and most (all?) of the Indian reservations do not either.

In any event, we knew we could not check in before 3 pm at the Lodge, and our dinner reservation was for 7:15 pm, so we had lots of time. So, we drove the half hour or so to the Hoover dam, getting a decent start around the 10 am check-out time. We would basically have to backtrack to Vegas to drive the 5 hours to the North Rim, though, and would lose the hour when we crossed time zones so didn't have a ton of time to spend there. It was super hot at the dam, topping 100 degrees in bright clear sunny skies. We parked and went into the visitor's center to find we could just get into a tour of the lower power house/generator floor, but didn't have enough time for the full tour.

Having worked in college at a power plant, I really found this tour interesting, where they took us down to the turbine deck and talked about the building of the dam and bypass tunnels and spillways. After the official tour, we walked along the top of the dam for awhile and took pictures before deciding that we were going to be late for dinner.