Cabeza De Vaca Trails: Hoover Dam and Lake Mead

The next day at Lake Mead we spent most of the morning at the beach swimming in the lake, since 8am was already sweltering outside! Then the afternoon we headed to Hoover Dam. I had been here before but it was a first for Antoine and Elisabeth, and it is very impressive! We walked along the dam itself before heading to the visitor’s center for a tour of the power plant. The tour was very cool and explained the history as well as how electricity is formed from the power of the Colorado River. Lake Mead is actually the reservoir created as a result of the dam along the Colorado River. The turbines to produce the electricity were huge, about 70 feet tall! We learned that when the dam was constructed around 1935 the methods were so rudimentary that about 96 workers met their death during the four year construction! We stopped at the beach on the way back since it was so hot outside! The next day we would head to the Grand Canyon!