Dam it All! (Sunday Daytime)

It wasn't actually too difficult to get up in time to meet our pick-up from Xpress Rent-A-Car. They brought a mini-van around for us and took us to their rental location on the Strip. There we got our banana-yellow Ford Mustang convertible. It was in decent driving condition, but was scratched all to hell -- it had so many stone chips on the front that I wondered if someone took it off-roading. The people there were really nice, and they also rent out exotics like BMWs and Dodge Vipers.

We hopped in the Mustang and drove down Flamingo Road to Blueberry Hill, where we stopped in for some decent chicken fried steak and coffee. From there, we headed to Hoover Dam, about 30 miles or so from Las Vegas. The dam was big! The tour was interesting! Do not do this in the summer unless you are prepared to bake in the Nevada/Arizona heat! We drove over the dam, took some pictures, and then drove back to the convenient visitor's center parking garage ($7). We took the Hoover Dam Discovery Tour ($11), which started with a brief movie, took us by the Nevada-side turbines, and ended with a presentation of a diorama of the Colorado River watershed. Hoover Dam is a stunning engineering achievement that has to be seen to be appreciated. The most amazing thing was the beautiful stone terrazzo floor in the visitor's balcony to the turbine room. Since it was laid in the 1930's, over 40 million visitors have walked over it, and it still looks amazing.


On the way back from the dam we stopped at the Ethel M. chocolate factory. The factory tour was open, but the factory wasn't actually in operation (it was Sunday), so the whole thing was a huge let-down. They gave us some free samples, but the sad truth is that they were about as good as Russell-Stover chocolates, and therefore not even worth buying. What was worse was that they were more expensive than San Francisco's beloved See's Candies, so we basically gave the store a pass and visited the adjoining cactus garden. The garden was reasonably interesting, and included an industrial water reclamation plant that processes waste water from the candy factory and uses it for irrigation.

After the less-than-satisfying trip to Ethel M. (the "M" is for "Mars," as in "M & M / Mars"), we decided to cruise the Strip in our cool wheels. This was ultimately a less-than-satisfying adventure because of the incredibly bad traffic. See, the intersection of the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) and Flamingo Road is a pedestrian nightmare. A zillion people are crossing the road, and unlike in the North Strip between the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay, there are no pedestrian overcrossings. So, all the people wander through the ground-level crosswalks, making it nearly impossible to turn right. On top of that, the extreme right lane actually disappears before the corner, causing traffic to have to merge one lane to the left. So, the right turn traffic backs up forever -- over a mile -- and it took us about half an hour to drive what would have been a 10 minute walk. We eventually got back to the car rental place, and made it back to the Luxor in time to get ready for our Sunday night adventure.