Hoover Dam

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

We stayed at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Now I am totally not a gambling kinda girl, nor do I have any illusion about the true nature of "Las Vegas" however the hotel rates in Vegas were $45.00 a night so our budget conscious nature won out and we tried as best we could to overlook the less desirable aspect of "Sin City".

This was the view from our room. The very tall thin gold building is the Trump International Hotel, and you can see the Wynn and the Encore as well!

We enjoyed our complementary Breakfast Buffet thanks to the hubs Gold Status. I had a freshly made spinach and cheese omelet made just for little ol' me!

After fortifying ourselves of all the huge Breakfast Buffet had to offer we headed out to see Hoover Dam.

The evening before as we drove into Las Vegas we had to cross over the dam as we entered into Nevada. This lengthy process took nearly 45 minutes as we had to wait in bumper to bumper traffic to pass through a security check which entailed the very detailed search of our car by a single man standing in the middle of the roads with a flash light as he peered into our car for maybe 15 seconds. I feel so safe and secure don’t y’all?

We had to repeat this process again upon our arrival the next day as well. Yea!!! For!!!! Us!!!!

The white lines higher up on the sides are where the water used to be. 

Hoover Dam was an impressive (there's that word again) example of the ingenuity and the determination of those with vision.

I found this bronze statue very interesting as it was perched just outside the welcome center. It gave you a very small glimpse into what it must have been like for all the thousand of individuals who spent their day working on this massive project.

For more information that you could ever want to know about the Hoover Dam you can click  here!

I can tell you that 112 people and one dog lost their lives in the process of it's construction.

 

Hoover Dam is 726 ft. tall. That is 171 ft. taller than the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. and twice as tall as the Luxor Casino (338 ft.) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At its base, Hoover Dam is as thick (660 ft.) as two footballs fields measured end-to-end.

As many as 20,000 vehicles a day drive across the 45 ft. wide top of the dam between Nevada and Arizona.

This little factoid will come to an end in the very near future. They are currently working on a bride that will bypass the roadway entirely and as soon as the bridge is complete the only access allowed directly on the Dam will be foot traffic.      

There is enough concrete in Hoover Dam (4 1/2 million cubic yards) to build a 2 lane road from Seattle, Washington to Miami, Florida or a 4 ft. wide sidewalk around the Earth at the Equator.

I can also tell you that as we walked around exploring this mega concrete structure the thermometer had to have topped 110 degrees.

 

Y'all it was HOT!

 

After about 90 minute in the sweltering heat we had had enough.

We headed back to the hotel for a bit of a rest before dinner and the strip, and as my fingers have had enough for one sitting and I feel certain that you are totally over this post as well I will save our stroll down the Strip for another day!

Blessings

R