Route 66 to Hoover Dam

Wednesday morning I woke feeling great after a wonderful night’s sleep, and ready to move on to the next part of my trip – a drive across Death Valley then North to Yosemite National Park for another multi-day hike (yet to be determined).

Unfortunately, over a foamy latte and raspberry jam filled croissant at breakfast, I heard the news that the US government had shut down over budget disputes between the Democrats and Republicans (basically, no budget has been approved).

This meant that all non-essential services, including National Parks, National Forest, and Monuments would be closed! I was gutted. Yosemite, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon. All closed. Now what do I do? It was hard to find information on what was open, and what was closed. Could I still drive the through road of Death Valley? Were there some sneaky back forest roads I could take?

What about State Parks – could there be an alternative set of hiking and camping in some of these? Or perhaps I could change my trip and drive the Pacific Highway (Route 1) along the coast of California up the San Francisco.

I spent a few hours on the internet looking at my alternatives, and trying to understand the dispute further. I still hadn’t made a decision by 10am, but decided to get going regardless – continue on the original plan and head towards Death Valley, hoping that the road would be open and I could at least drive through, or that the dispute would be resolved quickly and parks re-opened over the next few days.

I took the scenic Route 66 towards Kingman, then followed the train line toward Lake Mead. Despite being in the desert, it was incredibly picturesque, with far more colour than I expected.

Desert colour

Chasing freight trains

I have to admit, I did stop at Macca's for lunch (come on, I'm in the US and on a roadtrip!). It wasn't worth it!

An American icon

The highlight of the day was visiting Hoover Dam. The dam sits across Black Canyon on the Colorado River at the Arizona-Nevada border (30mi SE of Las Vegas). It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression. Over the 5 years, 21,000 men worked on the dam.

Hoover Dam intake towers

I couldn’t help but think of other great engineering feats as I walked across the 730ft tall dam walls, and was curious to compare this dam with the Snowy Mountains Scheme. The SMS was constructed between 1949 and 1974 (25yrs), and involved over 100,000 workers, over 70% of whom were migrants to Australia (from 30 countries). In contrast, the SHS involves a network of 16 dams (rather than just one) and 7 power stations (which makes comparison a bit more difficult).

The Hoover Dam wall is 726.4ft high, whereas the highest dam wall of the SMS is Talbingo Dam at 531ft. Hoover Dam has a nameplate capacity of 2.08 gigawatts (2,998,000 hp) compared to the SMS capacity of 3.772 gigawatts (5,058,000hp)

The first you see of the dam, is actually the highway bypass! Built between 2005-10 to divert the US 95 from running along the dam wall, it's just as impressive as the dam itself.

Hoover Dam bypass (formally the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge)

I didn't feel like a night out in the lonely dessert, so found a great place to stay - the Boulder Dam Hotel in nearby Boulder City, built to house dam workers - and a great place for dinner. Burgers at Dillingers and $1 pints of beer! Woo.