Day 81: Valley of Fire to Eldorado Wilderness, NV

We have reached the halfway point of our trip and are now heading back East. It really does feel like we have reached a turning point, swapping cooler climates and winter clothes for consistently scorching temperatures and shorts and T-shirts. We have seen and done so much but are still excited for what comes next. It feels like we are truly living each day to the fullest, as opposed to each day being the same and blurring together. We do miss some things about home - certainly not the stress, screens and monotony - but the comforts of a bathroom with reliable hot water, an oven and the ability to bake, and visits with the grandmas. 

This morning on Day 81, we were up with the sun to score some cooler temperatures for packing up. It was “only” 33 degrees Celsius which felt almost reasonable. We enjoyed our breakfast and viewed the beautiful sunrise with our friend the juvenile bighorn sheep (we didn’t share our breakfast with him, just the sunrise). This fellow’s horns weren’t as big as the ones we saw yesterday so there must be more than one sheep in the vicinity.

Our drive along the scenic highway to Hoover Dam was beautiful, though the landscape looks inhospitable. It sure is hot and dry here, at least until we arrived at Lake Mead. The complete absence of trees makes it feel foreign. We did see a wild horse on our journey. This was special as this was a first for all of us.

We arrived at Hoover Dam before the crowds and waited in line for tour tickets. The boys had a lot of trouble waiting peacefully in the hot weather. They resorted to giving each other leg massages to pass the time which went about how one might expect.

Luckily their behaviour improved once we were admitted inside the dam and into the air conditioning. We took the only tour type available today - to visit the power station. It was a bit brief for our liking showing us only one large pipe and the room with half the turbines. The visitors centre museum was modern and interesting and helped to fill in the gaps. Of particular interest, the dam was started in 1931 and took only five years from start to completion, finishing two years ahead of schedule. Cooling pipes were run through the concrete panels to speed curing, otherwise it would have taken one hundred years for all the concrete used in dam construction to dry. It was also neat to learn that the safety spillover channels have only been used once since construction - in 1983. The dam can hold two years worth of water but generally the water level is much lower than capacity.

You can see the high water line on the rocks behind the intake towers. At capacity, the striped sections of these towers are completely submerged.

One of the pipes where water flows into the power plant.

Schematic of the dam and power plant.

Tops of the turbines that make the electricity that leaves the power plant.

The small turbine that generates all the power used to run the dam and power plant.

After our brief foray into Arizona (we parked in the oversized lot on the Arizona side), we returned to Nevada to continue our day. On the way, we encountered some teenagers who has gotten their (parents’) car stuck in the gravel. Ian played the hero and pulled them out with the tow strap. They were most grateful and upon being freed were already discussing how to hide the incident from their parents. Teenagers.

We arrived unscathed at Nelson Ghost Town for a guided tour of the Techatticup Gold Mine in Eldorado Canyon. This was one of the largest gold producing mines in the area operating in the 1860s. This mine was interesting because we could see the quartz vein (where the gold and silver was) clearly visible both on the surface of the mountain and in the mine. The miners followed the vein precisely, removing almost all of it which left an obvious gap inside the mine. The tunnels thus, while still honeycombed, looked less haphazard compared to the Calico mine.

The quartz vein was clearly visible as it ran through the rock.

See the gap where the vein of quartz has been removed?

A miner died here after accidentally blowing himself up with dynamite. This was a dummy, not the real bones, lol.

Ali holding a miners’ candle.

Looking up to see empty spaces where the quartz has been removed.

Nelson wasn’t an authentic ghost town in the way that Bodie was but is now a horder’s paradise, full of antiques and heaps of junk strewn amongst the piles of crushed up quartz dust.

They had a neat miniature model of a stamping mill like we saw in Bodie. 

Seamus and Ali in jail.

Charlie Nelson’s cabin from the original mining town but it has been relocated and the roof restored.

Fist rock. Might be missing a finger?

Prop from a Kevin Costner movie. See the pile of quartz dust behind?

Ali made friends with a cactus.

The old saloon piano still played.

Cactus forest.

Time Machine? Santa’s sleigh? Who can tell.

This was the old doctor’s shed and had stairs leading down to a mine portal in the basement.

Ruins of the old stamping mill.

By this point we were all really hot and so headed down to the Colorado River to cool off with the locals. We loved the blaring tunes in Spanish and the waves from the Seadoos buzzing by.

We saw a hoodoo on the way to the river.

Holy cow. So hot.

After swimming we were exhausted. We cooked up BBQ in the riverbed parking lot and then found an empty turnout off the road to Nelson to sleep for the night. What a day!

Cactuses everywhere!