Hoover Dam
Nevada / Arizona
Going domestic this time. The Hoover Dam sits on the border of Nevada and Arizona about 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas. It's a very popular tourist attraction - about one million people a year take "the dam tour" - and it's extremely important to the region as it controls flooding, provides irrigation water, and provides electricity to people in three states.
As always, I won't bog you down with facts and history lessons about the place that you can get online from smarter people than me. I'm just going to list some hopefully helpful observations from our trip here last fall.
We had our daughter with us on this trip, and she really enjoyed the dam. We flew into Vegas but stayed in Boulder City the night before visiting. It's just minutes away from the dam and is a rather cute little town with plenty of local restaurants. I should point out that this was October, and we got to the dam early, right after they opened. We had no crowds at all. As with most tourist places, the game changes if you go when everyone else does. I'm guessing this place especially because they have limited space for ingress and egress. Parking was fairly easy. There's a garage right before you get to the dam. You can also drive across it to the Arizona side and park in a lot there.
Speaking of driving - up until 2010 the dam served as the crossing for the Colorado River on US 93. It's only two lanes and I imagine it would have been a real traffic nightmare as busy as that highway is. In fact, after 9/11 they wouldn't allow semi's, buses, or box trucks to cross it at all. They've constructed the Hoover Dam Bypass now - the four lane bridge seen above. You can't see the Hoover Dam at all when driving across the bridge as they made the sides too high (good call), but you can park at the base and walk out over it on a special walkway and get great views of the dam. We didn't do that and I kind of regret it. The only cars driving across the dam now are heading to the parking lot on the AZ side.
We took the simple tour of the inside of the dam. We were there when they opened so we got right in line and I think we waited for the elevator for about 5 minutes, during which time a very knowledgeable and funny gentleman answered questions for us. There is a longer tour which goes deeper into the dam and takes about an hour I believe, but we weren't sure how Samantha would do so we went with the shorter one which takes you to one of the turbine rooms. The elevator was tight, but other than that there are no issues even if you're claustrophobic or have trouble getting around. Samantha loved it.
After the tour we hit the Visitor's Center and the Original Exhibit Building where they had a rather interesting topographical map presentation. It was included on our tour ticket which I believe was $15. None of the outside the dam stuff was all that spectacular but I did learn a lot. It's worth checking out.
Other than that you just kind of walk around and take in the views of the dam, Lake Mead, and the surrounding landscape. There are places to eat and souvenir shops but nothing spectacular. If you don't have to wait to take the tour, you could be in and out of here in a little over an hour. A couple hours is really all you need.
Is it worth it? Yes, I think so. It's easy and cheap and I found it to be rather interesting. We hit the Grand Canyon and Vegas on this trip as well, and it's between them so if you're doing that you should definitely stop. You don't need to plan a trip around it, but if you're in the area visit the Hoover Dam.
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