the first thing that has to be said about the Hoover Dam is that it is huge! it is situated on the border between nevada and arizona and supplies electricity to both states as well as southern california. when you think about it they need a huge electricity supply to keep all the lights burning brightly on the Las Vegas strip. what would they do without the Hoover Dam?!

the dam was a major feat of engineering and yet only took 5 years to build. however there is the story that the concrete in the centre of the dam is still drying out - there’s so much of it! the dam is 221 metres high and is 379 m long at the top. you don’t really appreciate how high it is until you look over the top. when i was there a couple of years ago, the sheer scale of it overawed me. when i looked over the edge down to the blue Colorado River below, a definite sense of vertigo overcame me. i can’t believe that a stuntman jumped off the Hoover Dam for one of the bond films. he was either very brave of very stupid (or being paid a huge amount of money!). saying that, there is absolutely nothing to stop you climbing up and throwing yourself off. the americans appear to be very liberal about this sort of thing and the same situation occurs at the grand canyon where extremely steep drops are not fenced off.

anyway, i digress. you can take tours of the dam every day between 8am and 5.45pm during high season and 9am until 3.15pm in the off-season. you enter the lift by way of an elevator and the tours last 40 mins. the tours are extremely cheap at only a few dollars and are therefore very popular! the queues can be huge. the tacky souvenir shop is not to be missed with its t-shirts, posters and erasers. the tat that some people will buy. i should warn you that, like many other places in arizona etc, it can e incredibly hot at the dam so wear sun cream and drink plenty of water.

so what did the dam create? it created lake mead, which is one of the largest artificially created bodies of water in the world. Lake Mead covers an area of 603 sq. km and has a shoreline measuring 885 km. It’s HUGE! Lake Mead stopped the Colorado River in its tracks, flooding canyons, archaeological sites, wilderness areas and communities. However, people seem to have been forgiving and enjoy the area as a holiday and leisure resort. Boating holidays are extremely popular on Lake Mead as is fishing.

Word of warning about Lake Mead. When I visited there I was on a trekking holiday and we decided to camp out on the shore of Lake Mead. We hired a couple of speedboats and spent an enjoyable afternoon water skiing and pottering about. We had set our tents up on the shore overlooking the lake and the distant hills. As we were having a lunch the sky darkened over by the hills. A storm was coming but it was still a long way off or so we thought. All of a sudden a gale force wind came from nowhere and ripped our main communal shelter right out of the ground. Everyone had to run into tents to weight them down as the gale force wind blew sand in our face. Not much fun for me as I wear contact lenses! For several hours we sheltered in our tents weighing them down with our body weight and large boulders. It was one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. When the wind and the rain finally subsided we all crawled out the tents. One tent was ruined as the strength of the wind had bent all the poles. Several flysheets were torn and some of our belongings were strewn about the site.
I’ve no idea how strong the wind was but it was definitely gale force. The really strange thing was that it had been deadly calm with not a breath of wind before this gale struck. It was certainly the strangest weather I’ve experienced.

So visit the wondrous Hoover Dam and the gorgeous relaxing Lake Mead but when you see the sky darken, take cover!

the first thing that has to be said about the Hoover Dam is that it is huge! it is situated on the border between nevada and arizona and supplies electricity to both states as well as southern california. when you think about it they need a huge electricity supply to keep all the lights burning brightly on the Las Vegas strip. what would they do without the Hoover Dam?!

the dam was a major feat of engineering and yet only took 5 years to build. however there is the story that the concrete in the centre of the dam is still drying out - there’s so much of it! the dam is 221 metres high and is 379 m long at the top. you don’t really appreciate how high it is until you look over the top. when i was there a couple of years ago, the sheer scale of it overawed me. when i looked over the edge down to the blue Colorado River below, a definite sense of vertigo overcame me. i can’t believe that a stuntman jumped off the Hoover Dam for one of the bond films. he was either very brave of very stupid (or being paid a huge amount of money!). saying that, there is absolutely nothing to stop you climbing up and throwing yourself off. the americans appear to be very liberal about this sort of thing and the same situation occurs at the grand canyon where extremely steep drops are not fenced off.

anyway, i digress. you can take tours of the dam every day between 8am and 5.45pm during high season and 9am until 3.15pm in the off-season. you enter the lift by way of an elevator and the tours last 40 mins. the tours are extremely cheap at only a few dollars and are therefore very popular! the queues can be huge. the tacky souvenir shop is not to be missed with its t-shirts, posters and erasers. the tat that some people will buy. i should warn you that, like many other places in arizona etc, it can e incredibly hot at the dam so wear sun cream and drink plenty of water.

so what did the dam create? it created lake mead, which is one of the largest artificially created bodies of water in the world. Lake Mead covers an area of 603 sq. km and has a shoreline measuring 885 km. It’s HUGE! Lake Mead stopped the Colorado River in its tracks, flooding canyons, archaeological sites, wilderness areas and communities. However, people seem to have been forgiving and enjoy the area as a holiday and leisure resort. Boating holidays are extremely popular on Lake Mead as is fishing.

Word of warning about Lake Mead. When I visited there I was on a trekking holiday and we decided to camp out on the shore of Lake Mead. We hired a couple of speedboats and spent an enjoyable afternoon water skiing and pottering about. We had set our tents up on the shore overlooking the lake and the distant hills. As we were having a lunch the sky darkened over by the hills. A storm was coming but it was still a long way off or so we thought. All of a sudden a gale force wind came from nowhere and ripped our main communal shelter right out of the ground. Everyone had to run into tents to weight them down as the gale force wind blew sand in our face. Not much fun for me as I wear contact lenses! For several hours we sheltered in our tents weighing them down with our body weight and large boulders. It was one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. When the wind and the rain finally subsided we all crawled out the tents. One tent was ruined as the strength of the wind had bent all the poles. Several flysheets were torn and some of our belongings were strewn about the site.
I’ve no idea how strong the wind was but it was definitely gale force. The really strange thing was that it had been deadly calm with not a breath of wind before this gale struck. It was certainly the strangest weather I’ve experienced.

So visit the wondrous Hoover Dam and the gorgeous relaxing Lake Mead but when you see the sky darken, take cover!