Lake Mead

Spoiled rotten. We, or maybe it was just me, but I felt spoiled rotten when we were at the Lakeside Casino and RV Resort. "How so Tango? Can you please elaborate?' you ask.

When we were at the resort, we had electricity, never ending water and of course sewer. Many things people take for granted. Many RVers also. Until they are boondocking, which is camping without said electricity, water and sewer. Now as fate would have it, we are boondocking again. This time on Lake Mead.

Boondocking can get you to places that are truly amazing with scenery that will knock your socks off for sure. But the trade off is you have to be totally self contained, which we are. Most everything in the camper will run off of propane. The refrigerator, stove, oven, water heater and the generator. With so many things running off of propane, its just a matter of time when we run out of it. That usually happens at 2 or 3 in the morning. Meaning I am out there in my underpants swapping tanks. I know what you are thinking. "Thank the maker that at least he had underpants on." I did that once in Quartzsite with my underpants on and I think Jim or Barb saw me and they quickly sold their rig and left. Weird, I know.

One thing I did notice while we were in Quartzsite boondocking. I noticed that my dear wife Gladys never once changed the propane tanks at 2 in the morning in her underpants or volunteered to drive the stool bus.

Enough of my pity party. Thanks for coming.

Our wandering the desert tour has brought us out to Lake Mead Nevada. We are staying out on Stewarts Point and the camping here is totally free. Since we have left in November Lisa has been keeping track of our campground expenses. We like to be under $25 a day for campgrounds. With all of our boondocking and cheap places we are right around $13 a day! That is one thing nice about the west is that there are so many places to stay for free.

We took a day to go visit Steve and Joan. They opted to remain incognito so I did not get a picture of them. Actually I just forgot. They have volunteered at Lake Mead for several years now and we caught them the day before they were heading east. Lucky for us that we stay at undisclosed locations and then just pop up and surprise people. We are like a real life version of "Whack-a-mole". It doesn't give them a chance to run away. We enjoyed a quick lunch and then we let them get back packing for their journey east.

It was still early so we decided to visit the Hoover Dam since we were on this side of the lake. Security is very tight at the dam. There is a checkpoint that you have to stop at. They ask you if you have any weapons in the vehicle. I said "no". They then looked through our windows and saw a tote in the back. "Sir, you will have to pull over and be searched." "Uh, okay." Well they searched the tote and found nothing so we were on our way. Whew, I thought we were done with the anal probing once we left Area 51.

There is not many places to park here, but they have a new parking ramp. For $10 you have to park there. I guess we are paying for it then. We park and start walking to the visitor center. We get to the door and it says that you have to go through security again and to get into the visitor center it is another $10. The tours are separate and they cost separate fees also. We decided to just walk the dam and look around. It bothers me a little bit to be charged for attractions that have been taxpayer funded.

As we walked around we saw lots and lots of men with automatic weapons. Security was everywhere. I am not sure what they are preparing for but they were ready for something. Maybe the coronavirus? There is a new bridge that has been built to alleviate a lot of the traffic on the bridge.

Another engineering marvel. You can walk across the bridge for an excellent view of the dam.

Steve and Joan gave us some maps and ideas to check out while we were here. One was called the Fire Bowl. Beautiful red rocks.

It was a little death march to get there but well worth it. Steve told us that if you want to cut that march in half, there was a jeep road to get close to it and then you didn't have to march so far. If only we had a Jeep. It was a perfect place for Lisa to do some modelling.

I guess she didn't get the memo about wearing a bikini today. We then stopped at an overlook. that turned out to be a quarter mile death march uphill to some fantastic views.

Our last day required us to find a dump and fill station. Remember our little camper has small tanks. So we drove it to Echo Bay and dumped. Once back at our spot in Stewarts Point we decided to do Valley of Fire another time. We have been there before so it was okay. So we just enjoyed the solitude of Lake Mead. When you sit out there, you would not believe how quiet the lake and the desert can be.

I would have to say that that would be in the top ten beautiful places to camp.

"Gladys, where do you want to go next?" I asked.

"Surprise me!"