Hoover Dam! This place is incredible!!

About an hour away from all the lights and glamour of Las Vegas, lies a place called the Hoover Dam. This place is incredible. My first trip there was about 16 years ago. We had gone on a family vacation to California, so on the way home we stopped in Las Vegas. I was way too young to gamble, but the sight of The Hoover Dam was forever imprinted in my mind.

My dad took a day off from gambling to take us. I can remember walking up and looking over the side; I was totally amazed. They had some large trucks on the bottom; these looked like Tonka Trucks from up on top. We did not take the tour that day. My sister’s and I were all pretty young, so we would not have appreciated it.

However, I returned to The Hoover Dam 3 years ago. This time I did take the tour and was it ever worth it. We did not take the hard hat tour. This really takes you “behind the scenes”. We took the basic tour; this took you down to the bottom and showed you the working side of the dam. It was fascinating to learn how important the dam is to everyday living.

It serves of course, as a dam to the Colorado River. Besides that, it is also an electrical plant. The tour takes about an hour and a half; it is a definite must. They also teach you about the history of the dam. I never realized how many men died while building this great structure. It is definitely not hard to imagine though, because it is huge and looks like it took a lot of work(dangerous work) to build.

I would highly recommend taking a day and going out to visit. You can make the trip and the tour in a half day. We took a bus from the hotel in Las Vegas out to the dam. This was fun, but it took all day. We left around 10:00 and got back about 6:00.

The bus made several stops along the way. If you have a full day to spare; then I would recommend it. We stopped at a museum. This was out in the middle of the desert. It had all kinds of neat historical things. It had some of the first slot machines. From there, we stopped at a hotel/casino; again in the middle of nowhere. We were fed a buffet lunch and had some time to gamble there if we wanted.

We then headed to the dam and we were there about 3 hours. Finally, on the way home we stopped at the Ocean Spray factory. We were given some samples of juices and new products that had not made it to the store yet. This was neat. I think the whole tour cost us around $25.00. It was definitely worth it.