Hoover Dam and Lake Mead

 

I promised pictures so here they are.  This was our first day trip on our Nevada vacation.  First we went to the Hoover Dam.  It was soooo much fun.  These kids didn't even complain about the hiking to and from our parking.  Glen grew up on a dam (Coulee Dam in Washington), so this wasn't anything new to him.  I've gone with Glen to the Coulee Dam twice but this was still fairly new to me and was a first for the kids.  On our way there, we talked about dams that beavers make (Lady and the Tramp is a fun example of this) and then we saw the dam.  They were amazed at how huge it was.  The water was way down so it was a bit scary from the top.  We all went down into the Visitor's Center and watched a 10 min. video.  Then I took Andrew, Izzy and Calvin down into the dam while Glen and Alex went to the observation station.  Glen had both the camera and video camera so I didn't get any pictures of the cool caves we were walking through.  I asked if Izzy was pretending to be a bat in the bat cave and she said she'd prefer a bear.  It was a fun and amazing experience.

On our way home, we stopped at Lake Mead.  We've always talked about doing all these things, but the day finally came.  It too was lots of fun.  First it was just a lot of rocks and shells being thrown out into the water.  Then the kids wanted to touch the water, of course.  Then I think Izzy asked if she could get her feet wet, but I think she'd already gotten her shoes and everything wet (sounds like me as a kid.)  Then it led to getting legs wet and eventually all 3 kids had tripped and "accidentally" gotten wet from neck to feet.  Of course all 3 trips happened after I turned the video camera off, but we laughed at how wet they got when we hadn't planned on getting wet at all.  Fun day!!!