Hoover Dam & Red Rock

Fed up with the Strip, we picked up the rental car I booked yesterday, and headed out of town.

It was a gorgeous day to visit Hoover Dam, though it was hot. Mom had hard time walking under the scorching sun, but enjoyed the view. After walking (a little) across the dam and taking pictures, we drove up to the new bridge they built way above the dam. It wasn't built yet when M and I were married in Vegas 13 years ago, but now it's dominating the view over the canyon, the dam and the lake Meade. As expected, there were hordes of tourists.

After the heat exposure at the dam, we needed a shade and a cold beer, and M guided us to Boulder City, where we sat at a diner in which the present time was still 1955. The walls were of sheet metal, covered with pictures of soldiers and water skiers. There was a long bar along one side, where locals had their lunch and coffee and chatted amiably with waiters and each other. The locals were friendly and chatty with us too - I had a brief conversation while waiting for the loo with a man who lived his whole life in Boulder City and informed me that the winter is "harsh" there with temperatures dropping to around 20 C!

Outside the diner, which advertised mouthwatering homemade cinnamon rolls, but ran out of them, we had an ice cream in a local shop in a strip along the main street. The rest were family houses on beautiful lawns, clean and picturesque, like a postcard from the time long past, on which the colors somehow managed not to fade. Then it was on to Red Rock.



The Red Rock park was something completely else. Breathtaking views of the sand and water washed red sand-rocks, some bleached to pink, with white stripes showing the currents that shaped it in the past, others were red rocks topped with white rocks, then further down the Nature's painter reversed the colors and put white rocks topped with red. We climbed down a little slope, took pictures left and right and realized in how bad a shape mom really is, when she couldn't lift her leg to mount an ankle-height rock climbing back up toward the car. She went over it on her knees, brushing everything off with a smile, but the fact that she is so immobile makes me worried.

After a longish drive around the park and more stops for picture-snapping, it was time for dinner at a Vegas' suburb in a sports bar which had a wing and beer special, so that is what we had.

To crown the almost-perfect day, M and I went for a swim at the hotel's pool in the atrium. It's under the open sky with palm trees and a jacuzzi. It wasn't much of a swim, because the pool was only 3 ft deep, but we enjoyed it. The best part was when M brought two glasses of Californian red wine from the bar and we lounged on the chairs, alone in the pool area, and sipped. Then we sipped some more in a jacuzzi, and finally were washed up enough for bed.