The plan for the day was to head up to the Hoover Dam, followed by a trip into Las Vegas and a stop at the Vegas KOA. The first stop was the Hoover Dam. Unfortunately, we hit some pretty heavy traffic heading into the dam (and probably some of it into Arizona to keep travelling, since there is really no other way to get into the northwest of Arizona). We had to drive to the Arizona side of the dam because we weren't 'just a car'. The good news was the parking was free. The bad news was it was a fair ways from the dam. Everyone took the trek down to the dam (except for Pam, she waited in the car and read a book). This was definitely a place to be very careful. There were reasonable safeguards from just falling over, however, there really was nothing to stop someone from just hopping up and hopping over. Mind you, if you hopped off the Lake Mead side, it was only about a 20 foot drop. The other side was more like this (those small things crossing the dam are indeed transport trailers):
We walked around the visitor centre, but decided not to take the tour (cost a lot and takes a while). We were able to read about the Hoover Dam and watch a bit of a video on it. We did get a very patriotic and memorable shot:
Now what we planned to do next was head in to Las Vegas and check and see if we could get in to the Las Vegas KOA (it looked fairly nice, and it was a bit aways from the city). As we drove in to, and then out of, Las Vegas, that plan died. The thought of staying in Las Vegas was not appealing to anyone (well, except Reba), and besides we wanted to get further along towards the canyons in Utah, and quite frankly the weather was pretty cold and we thought a night in the trailer with it around 35-40 at night was not going to be too fun. Little did we know what we would do three days later.
At any rate, we headed right on towards Utah, but as it started to get late and with the appeal of inexpensive hotel accomodation, we decided to stop in Mesquite, Nevada. This city is almost right on the border of Arizona (there is a little piece of Arizona before getting into Utah). We found a Holiday Inn that was only $29.95 per night (apparently the least expensive in the US) from Sunday to Thursday nights. It being Wednesday, we decided to get two rooms. In fact, once we saw the accommodations, I went back to the front desk and booked us in for a second night. With our registration we got a coupon book to the casino next door, which had the same ownership as the hotel. As I already knew, the place where they really make their money is in the casino, not in the hotel business. That explained the prices. Here are the establishments:
Since stopping at Mesquite, we had heard two people highly recommend a restaurant called Carrollo's. They had 'the best' ribs. Even though it was fairly late (around 8 PM) we headed to this restaurant for dinner. It was fantastic, the ribs were superb (best we'd ever had). The dinner, as it turned out, was the same price as both hotel rooms for one night, so this would likely be our last fancy restaurant for a little while.
We had a great time in Mesquite. The day was mostly spent hotel-rooming. It was quite windy and fairly cold outside. David, Heather Lynn, and Reba went to a movie in the evening, 'Forces of Nature'. We liked it, however, I wouldn't call it one of the better movies ever made. Only one indoor picture was taken, sorry for the blur, I didn't want to take an overly posed shot and rushed it (yes, I did gamble and lose an entire 75 cents in the casino):
Well, it is time to head on to Zion.