It takes 9 hours and 20 minutes to drive from our home to Las Vegas. We stopped after 9 hours and 10 minutes to visit the scenic Hoover Dam Bypass bridge, which was opened last fall and is an alternate for the road across the Hoover Dam connecting Arizona and Nevada. We had visited the dam almost exactly ten years ago. Much is the same but the water levels are significantly lower and the number of tourists and tour prices much higher. If you walk across the bridge you get great views of the dam and the Black Canyon but you can’t enter Arizona by foot in what apparently is another attempt by Arizona to keep illegals out of their fine state.
I prefer to call the dam by its rightful name: the Boulder Dam. A Republican congress renamed it after their hero Hoover who had nothing to do with the building of the dam but did attempt to destroy the country, which is the core Republican strength. Hoover is an appropriate iconic name for Republicans as Republicans suck.
Boulder City, Nevada sits near the dam and avoided the re-naming horror. Boulder City is a tidy, lovely city that has made both gambling and large hotels illegal and has controlled growth and sprawl by incorporating land for 20 miles around and issuing very few building permits each year. Boulder City has nice parks and lots of realistic, intimate public art. But Fox dominates the city and so nothing is perfect.
Boulder Dam of course provides 2GW of power to the region and I have comprehensively documented the power distribution mechanisms in my photos. Within the Boulder City limits is the new El Dorado Thin Film Solar Array, which generates a peak of 10 MW and is actually rather attractive from some angles.
On our way to the dam we took the Kelso Bypass and visited the Mohave National Preserve. We saw no other cars as we traveled about 45 minutes along an eroding red road to reach Kelso, a “ghost town” where we found a modest visitor center, a grumpy Ranger and the happiest owner-operator of a NPS food concession I’ve met. We saw the Kelso Dunes, the tallest sand dunes in the US, and saw the largest forest of Joshua Trees in the world, many of which were apparently starting to bloom. We saw two cars in the next hour as we continued along the red road back to a US highway near Searchlight.
It is easy to forget how large and generally un-populated California is but when you drive across Kern and San Bernadino Counties you are reminded of this. Fun facts: Kern County is larger than 4 US states and is nearly the size of New Jersey; San Bernadino Country is larger that 9 US states and 23 European countries, coming in larger than Switzerland and just smaller than Ireland. Arid jagged peaks, huge bajadas and low rain fall make for great meditative driving … just remember to bring water … or at least venti ice coffees.
The Pacheco and Tehachapi passes, the Boron Borax mine and Mohave used aircraft yard were pretty much the only other interesting things along the trip. Near Santa Nella hundreds of tumbleweeds were tumbling in all directions. Some tumbleweeds were huge; one as large as the Mini attacked us but I skilfully avoided it and the other panic-ed drivers who were skilfully avoiding it and me. There was the usual I-5 mirage about 10 miles from Buttonwillow, where shimmering double-height cars and trucks are seen moving vaguely near the horizon. Cherry trees started to blossom and egrets and lambs enjoyed each other’s company in cotton fields. Otherwise I-5 is a study in serial boredom.
And yes, we did travel 550 of the 570 miles to Las Vegas and passed by without stopping. After all, there isn’t much to do in Las Vegas.
You will want to see all my photos from this trip. Won’t you?