Monday    Las Vegas

Up early (for Las Vegas) and drove to the Hoover Dam, about 60km south of Las Vegas. I had driven over the same road coming into Las Vegas on Saturday afternoon but didn’t stop as it was too late in the day to tour the dam.

I was first in the door at the Visitor Centre when it opened at 9am. I hadn’t been first there but the others waiting were a bit slow when the doors opened. I bought a ticket for the 9.30 tour. The tour I bought a ticket for has limited numbers on each tour (limited by the number of people who can fit into the elevators. The tickets for the whole day can sell out by 10am.

While we were all waiting we were shown a ten minute film on the construction of the dam in the 1930s.

The tour began with us descending 250m by elevator through the rock wall of the canyon next to the dam and after a short top to see the pipes carrying water from the dam to the generators arrived in one of two  halls where electricity is generated.

We then walked through long passageways inside the dam itself and went down another elevator. The passageways were now smaller and eventually came to one that was circular and led to the face of the downstream side of the dam. We all shuffled along the passageway and took our turns to take photos looking out and up. We then saw the internal staircase than runs from top to bottom of the dam; it isn’t one continuous flight of stairs, but only has one landing in nearly 250m length. We then took an elevator up to the top of the dam and emerged at the road level about half way across the dam. Our guide then said ‘that’s your dam tour finished’ and we all laughed, some more than others (the guide had made some other ‘dam’ jokes during the tour and at least my laughter echoed down the long passageways).

I walked across the dam and back. The border between Nevada and Arizona is in the middle of the dam. I went back into the visitor centre to see the exhibits that I hadn’t seen before the tour started. Then back to the hotel for a swim in the huge but shallow pool; it isn’t more than a 1.5m deep at any point but there is a lifeguard on duty at all times; even if I was the only one on the pool.

I needed to buy a pair of shoes to wear to the wedding this afternoon and there is a shopping centre the size of a small planet on the other side of the street to the hotel; I eventually bought my shoes at Macy’s; after looking at about fifty other shops.