Saturday, November 17, 2012

Las Vegas Bay, Lake Mead National Recreation Area

Lake Mead has quite a few camping areas. We decided to stop at Las Vegas Bay because it is close to Las Vegas, Henderson, and Boulder City. We had our choice of areas to visit while we camped there. Once we arrived we found a great site that had a limited view of Lake Mead.

Our first day we drove to North Las Vegas to do some shopping at Nellis AFB. Again, we were reminded of why we don't like Las Vegas--too much traffic!

The next day we took our bicycles to ride the historic train tunnels to Hoover Dam. There are five tunnels leading up to Hoover Dam.
We thought the trail would be paved, but it was hard packed gravel. We were able to ride our bikes on it, but we had to avoid areas with piles of gravel.We took a rest on our way back.
We had a great view of the marina. The marina at Las Vegas Bay was moved due to the low water level and the boats are now at the marina near the dam.
  
We spent the next few days geocaching and visiting casinos in Henderson and Boulder City. Boulder City had some interesting art work around town. Several pieces were virtual geocaches. This was a part of machinery used to build Hoover Dam.
 
 Both Boulder City and Henderson had great parks. This is at the Heritage Park in Henderson. We found quite a few caches in and around this park.
 Our last day at Las Vegas Bay we decided to try the Mountain Loop Trail that goes through Lake Mead National Recreation Area to Boulder City and then Henderson. The trail is over 30 miles long so we only tried the portion starting at the Henderson entrance gate to Lake Mead. We ended up riding about 5 miles and it wore us out! The portion of the trail where we started happens to be the highest elevation for Lake Mead. Needless to say, we realized quickly that we were going to have to ride back up those switchbacks and hills to get to the car.
 Naturally it was time to move on and we didn't go too far. We did make it out of Nevada and into Arizona--barely!

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