We took our time in the morning ahead of checking, thinking we had a generous noon departure time, only to find out that it was actually 11am when the RV manager came over. Whoops! We rushed to leave just after 11.30am. Lisette didn’t really get to see much of the RV park as she stayed at the RV pretty much the entire time, but it was nice to chill and it was a comfortable park, as evidenced by the obvious long-term RV residents there.
Our main stop today was Hoover Dam; there’s a brief stop at a scenic lookout that we also checked out ahead of entering the Dam. There was a security checkpoint ahead of driving in (which is understandable given the significance of the Dam). I’m not sure about you, but going through any type of security always makes Lisette anxious! Fortunately security was super chill, Michael had to get out and open a few of the doors outside to show the contents, and then we were on our way.
Seeing Hoover Dam in person made us better appreciate it as an incredible architectural and engineering feat. It’s a concrete dam that was built between 1931-36 during the Great Depression, involving thousands of workers but sadly also costing hundreds of lives. Another tragic occurrence was the death of Hoover Dam’s mascot, a puppy found at the construction site. The dog traveled to and from the dam site with the workers, spending his days visiting many of the work areas, but sadly died on February 21, 1941 when a truck rolled over him while he lay under it sleeping. There’s a grave that explains this at Hoover Dam where he was buried the same day he died. There are so many beautiful stories about loyal dogs, and this is another one of them. As dog owners, all we can say is, aren’t dogs the absolute best?
The tourist building was closed off for renovations when we went, but it was cool to simply walk around and marvel at the Dam, and also see both the Nevada and Arizona side (which are on two different time zones at the moment–interesting fact, Arizona is an hour ahead as it doesn’t observe daylight savings time, unless it’s a Navajo reservation which does observe daylight savings time)!
A Loud Bang
As we were leaving, the sun started to set so we figured we’d quickly need to find a place to park for the night. The app we use to find RV parks, places to boondock, dumping spots and other places of interest is iOverlander, which often has uploads with GPS coordinates and comments from other folks who are on the road. There was an entry directing us to a spot off the highway to drive in and camp for the night. Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize is that as soon as we turned off the road, there was an extremely steep dropoff, which may or may not have damaged the self-leveling arm on the opposite side to the one that already needs to be replaced (it seemed to be leaking hydraulic fluid). It was quite scary to hear a loud bang, followed by the drop, indicating that something was clearly amiss! We took this as a sign to leave, but this first required us to get some blocks from inside the RV, and place them on the steep dropoff point to serve as a ramp to drive across and back up.
Because it was getting very dark quickly, we also took our bikes down from the front of the RV and brought them inside so the headlights could shine through. The highway road was terrible–incredibly bumpy with poor attempts to patch it together in parts, in addition to the wind being very strong and making it rather challenging to steer the RV along. After our little scare with the attempt to camp, we were more conscious of every bump (which was probably every second) on the highway as we criss-crossed our way to Kingman, our next stop–a city along historic Route 66.
When we finally made it to Kingman, and after grabbing dinner (burgers and fries at In N’ Out–it was too late to cook), we parked at a nearby Goodwill parking lot, and called it a night.
Route Map
