When we first decided that we were going to try this roadschool thing we taped a five foot long piece of butcher block paper on the wall, attached a sharpie to it and invited the big kids to write down the places and things that they wanted to see as we traveled the country. Hoover Dam was one of the first things to go on the list.
Our visit didn't go quite as we hoped, though.
As we were leaving Joshua Tree Sayers fever came back and would not break. Again, she was not eating or drinking and she was lethargic. We gave it a day to see if it was something that as just going to run a quick course, but the next day she was worse so we ended up taking her to Mike O'Callaghan Federal Hospital at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas for treatment. Most of you know from our Facebook updates that it was a rough week with her being subjected to several tests and lots of exams. Much to our relief, she ended up having a viral infection that, while inconvenient, would run its course over the next two weeks and be done.
Her generally icky state and the time that we spent going to and from the doctor didn't allow for as much touristy stuff to happen as we hoped. Instead, John and I took turns taking the big kids to the pool and playground, and we were able to do "drive bys" of a few things that we hoped to see.
Additionally, while we were at Nellis we were notified that the Veterans Administration was requiring, within 30 days, a re-evaluation of John's knee since it has been a year from his surgery. The evaluation, of course, had to be done in Portland. That, coupled with the advice of the pediatrician at Nellis to have S re-evaluated, put us back on the move to the Pacific Northwest. Still, we knew that we could not leave the Southern Nevada area without going to the Hoover Dam, so we carved out an afternoon to do a walking tour of the dam.
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| The view from the dam parking lot on the Arizona side. The back side of the dam with the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge in the background. |
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| In this entire region of Nevada the mountains are so beautiful they look like a painting. |
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| Looking down at the dam complex from the parking garage on the Nevada side. |
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| My people are all about accountability. :) |
The dam complex includes a serious number of commemorative statues, plaques, and cement work as well as an inlaid diagram of all of the stars and constellations that were visible on the night the dam was dedicated. Here are some of them...
Lake Mead is incredibly low, as are most lakes in the Southwest. In these pictures you can see the high water line and the current water level...
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| The benchmark |
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| Nevada Time |
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| John, P and S are in Arizona and me, G and RS are in Nevada. This is a difficult picture to get because of the crowded sidewalk and busy road. |
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| Arizona Time Intrestingly, when we left Gunnar said that the Arizona clock was wrong and gave a pretty good argument for his case, but neither John or I was paying much attention... |
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| I loved all of the art deco touches. The fonts, the gold decor...so 1930's. |
We had learned about hydroelectricity in a unit study we did last year, so we just reviewed that information as we walked around. As I was typing this, though, I asked the kids what the most interesting new thing they learned about Hoover Dam was. Here are their answers:
G: Not a lot of people died making Hoover Dam. Over ten thousand people built it but less than one hundred died, and most of those died from disease. They didn't kill many people building the dam because they brought in preformed concrete blocks instead of pouring wet cement,
P: I think it's interesting that the dog that the workers adopted got run over by a truck because he laid there for a nap. Hasn't he seen those things roll before?
R: It's hot. And lots of wind.
So, overall, an educational trip and we're glad to have it checked off of our list!
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