Nevada and Arizona/Hoover Dam

We have had enough cold weather and snow to last us a life time, so we headed for the desert. We are staying on the Colorado River that separates Arizona and Nevada on a Mohave Indian reservation. The weather is great, 70s in the day and a little cool at night. I hear you folks in Texas are having snow, sorry 'bout that! We spent the first week just getting outside, running and playing in the nice weather. We even braved the pool, still a little cold! Over the weekend we visited Hoover Dam and Lake Mead National Park. What a great time! The dam is big, lots of concrete but the history behind it is better. I've heard that the government will at sometime stop visitors from crossing and touring the dam. So, we thought we would grab a little of our American history while we still could. They are in the process of building another road and bridge that crosses the Colorado River, so I assume once that is complete, the traffic across Hoover Dam will cease. After the tour of the Dam, we headed to Lake Mead Nation Park for our little Jr. Rangers. This is just as much fun for me as it is for the kiddos. After they went through their program on desert critters and lake history, we hiked an old train trail that was used in the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s. After the Dam was finished, there was no more use for the train track to run through there and in recent years, the National Park has tore out the rail road and allowed hikers to use it to hike the 4 miles to Hoover Dam. I really wanted to do this hike, but was afraid that Auby couldn't do it. So we decided we would do just a little of it. There are 5 tunnels cut out of the mountains that you go through on your hike, my goal was to reach the first tunnel so the kids could see it (about a mile in) and hike back out. We reached the tunnel just fine, the kids are having a good time and no one was whining yet. But, once we reached the first one, the kids wanted to go to the next one, and so on it went until we hiked through all 5 tunnels! We ended up hiking back to the bottom of the dam! The tunnels are huge, you just can't imagine how big they are, I hope the pictures do them justice. Everything was just beautiful, the trail ran beside Lake Mead and the evening sun was shinning on the mountains and after a long day of touring, the kids where hiking champs!