Monday, Aug. 20:

So I got up early to start work, about 5:30 a.m. During our trip back to Chicago, I’m working online in the mornings and then making calls and writing in the afternoons while Bea drives. Somehow I had no cell reception on the 20th floor of the Monte Carlo, which is on the Las Vegas Strip, but I still managed to get some work done.

Meanwhile, Bea awoke and walked the Strip some more, returning with crepes from La Creperie in the Paris hotel. We both discovered this place about five years ago when we first came to Vegas together, and we were hooked. I’m not sure how they compare to crepes in Paris, although Bea said she likes them more, most likely because they tend to be sweeter.

Anyway, we split a breakfast crepe with eggs and veggies in it. Then she got one for herself with fresh berries and chantilly cream, and I got one with Nutella and sliced bananas.

To the Hoover Dam

We left the hotel around noon and went to Circuit City to look for a power inverter. The inverter plugs into our car’s cigarette lighter and provides an AC outlet. Circuit City didn’t have it, but Office Max did. The thing is a lifesaver, and has allowed me to write on the laptop while on the road, plus we can both charge our cellphones and the digital camera’s battery while we’re driving.

Then we headed east toward Hoover Dam and were there in the next hour and a half. It was hot again but we were able to park in the garage. We went into the visitor’s center, watched an introductory movie, and then went on a tour in the dam, where you get to see the underground turbines churning out hydroelectric power. It was obviously amazing to hear about how they built it, and especially how quickly they did it: five years. They were constantly pouring concrete during construction, at a rate of about three feet every 78 seconds, I think was the statistic. Both of us immediately thought of the Big Dig, a huge construction project in Boston that has taken decades, cost billions, and still wasn’t built right. Thinking about it now, it seems that most construction projects today tend to cost more, take longer, and not be built as well.

Either way, the dam is amazing. When you go outside and check out the view from the top, it looks like a giant slide. On the other side is Lake Mead, which the guides told us would be able to flood the state of Pennsylvania with a foot of water. You can tell the level of the lake is going down quickly by the different colors on the rock surrounding it. Bea read or heard something about how Vegas and much of Southern California could be out of water in 10 years if the current conditions — the drought and booming construction in that area — continue.


On to the Grand Canyon

By the time we got done with the tour, it was getting into the late afternoon and so we needed to get going. We wanted to try to make it to the Grand Canyon in time for sunset.

Well, we missed by about 20 minutes, but it was OK. We got to see it during dusk, or crepusculum as Bea and I like to call it (Happy Crepusculum, we say to one another). It’s obviously difficult to put into words what it’s like to see the Grand Canyon because it’s so amazing. I’ve heard from a lot of people that they get tired of the vistas, that it’s just a hole in the ground. Bea and I never tired of the views. That evening, we stopped at Mather Point and took it all in — the striations of different colored rocks, the way it all just seems to glow, the jutting spires and peaks that seem to improbably be still sitting there and not collapsing.

The last time we were in Vegas, we took a bus tour of the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon, and frankly, it was awful. We didn’t even stop at the Hoover Dam, just took pictures from afar. And we had about 20 minutes to take in the views at the Grand Canyon. We spent more time at a disgusting buffet restaurant on the way to the Grand Canyon than we did at the Grand Canyon itself. This time around was much, much better.

Quick story: One thing we remember from that first tour was how a guide told us about one woman’s foolish encounter with a squirrel. Apparently the woman had never seen a squirrel, and so she tried to pick it up so someone could take a picture of her posing with it. The squirrel, of course, bit her. And that’s where her Grand Canyon experience ended.

Anyway, after crepusculum ended, we drove to a general store so Bea could check out the gift shop. There wasn’t much there worth buying. So then we drove back to Mather Point to see what we could see now that it was dark out. There were so many stars in the sky — Bea said she had never seen so many at one time. It was amazing. But the Grand Canyon was dark and so we headed to our campsite in the park and went to bed. We were planning on getting up early the next morning so we could see the sun rise over the canyon.