Just the Right Amount of Wrong?

The Trip – Day 7

Hurricane, Utah – Valle, Arizona

Las Vegas, Hoover Dam

381 miles

This day was to be primarily a heavy driving day. The Grand Canyon, our next national park stop, required some back-tracking, so we had planned to drive southwest from Hurricane, around Las Vegas, and then turn east into northern Arizona and continue to the small town of Valle, 30 miles south of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. As we left Hurricane in the early morning, I thought it would be fun to drive through Las Vegas rather than skirt around it, to drive down the iconic Las Vegas Strip just to say we had done it. Las Vegas was a small town (by New York and Chicago standards) and going through it shouldn't take much longer than looping around it. Neither my husband nor I had ever been to Vegas, our only familiarity with it being the movie Ocean's Eleven, the George Clooney/Brad Pitt/Matt Damon remake of a Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin/Sammy Davis, Jr. classic. My husband agreed to drive the Strip while I took some photos of the Bellagio out the car window to send to our youngest daughter, a big fan of the George Clooney Ocean's Eleven.

Approaching Las Vegas

Our drive along Interstate 15 got more deserty-looking as we approached Las Vegas. The city appeared in the distance, looking smaller and less gaudy than I had imagined (but, then, I have seen both New York's Time Square and the Wisconsin Dells...). I had carefully planned to drive through Vegas just past the morning rush hour, so I thought, not realizing that leaving Utah for Nevada would move us to an hour earlier, from the Mountain to the Pacific time zone briefly before we would be back again in the Mountain time zone when we entered Arizona. Needless to say, the traffic on the Las Vegas Strip was bumper to bumper, making for both excellent picture taking and an understandably crabby driver. The buildings and billboards and architecture of the city seemed surreal, like a caricature of itself to two people who had never seen it before (one of whom was presently not really seeing any more of it than the back of the car in front of him). We passed the Cosmopolitan, and I pondered what their television ad campaign - “Just the right amount of wrong” - said about the city as a whole. When we finally moved beyond the Strip and were heading back to the interstate, we passed by a young man walking aimlessly along the sidewalk, randomly throwing traffic cones into the lanes of oncoming traffic. Somehow it didn't seem that out of place, though I did think he had exceeded the right amount of wrong...

 

The Bellagio

The Cosmopolitan

Approaching Lake Mead

Back on the road heading east into Arizona, we came upon another “surprise

The Hoover Dam from the walkway

adventure”. In all my trip planning, I somehow missed that the Hoover Dam was on the route toward the Grand Canyon. The sprawling blue of Lake Mead appeared ahead of us, then a sign for the Hoover Dam viewing area. Of course, we turned off the highway and headed for the viewing area, needing something to cleanse our retinas of the sights of the city we had just gone through. The Hoover Dam was just the thing. After days of seeing God-created wonders, the man-made wonders of Vegas were decidedly underwhelming, but the man-made dam was an impressive sight. A viewing walkway and information area had been built overlooking the dam, parallel to the highway. It was extremely windy that day, so strong that I felt I finally knew what it meant to be blown off one's feet. The viewing walkway had high railings, so there was no danger of being blown over the rail, but we had to hold onto the railings to pull ourselves along the walkway against the wind. The effort, however, was worth it. The Colorado River, which we had first seen flowing through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, in Grand Junction, and would see the next day twisting through the Grand Canyon, was here held back by the huge dam, creating the very blue and enormous Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States by volume. Built during the Great Depression for flood control, irrigation and hydroelectric power, the Boulder Dam, renamed for President Herbert Hoover, was also a major roadway until 2010 when the Hoover Dam Bypass was completed, much to the relief of travelers who could be delayed for several hours in the traffic congestion crossing the popular tourist attraction.

Hoover Dam and walkway panorama photo

 

We continued on after the dam through the arid land of northern Arizona to the small (Tiny!) town of Valle, an easy drive from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Valle consisted of a gas station, a convenience store, a Flintstone-themed campground, an airport (!) and our “hotel” complex, a neat but rustic, bare-boned western-themed collection of inn and motel rooms. Our outside-entrance second-floor motel room had a painting on the door of Clint Eastwood from one of his spaghetti westerns. The room was “quaint”, but it was clean and close to where we were heading the next day. 

Our room for the night

 

This morning I came, I saw and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for the first time this great feat of mankind.

- President Franklin Roosevelt, at the dedication of the Boulder (Hoover) Dam, September 30, 1935

You of all people should know, Terry, in your hotel, there's always someone watching.

- Tess (Julia Roberts) to Terry (Andy Garcia), owner of the Bellagio, Ocean's Eleven

Next:

Grand!

The Trip – Day 8

The Grand Canyon

48 miles