Lake Mead, Las Vegas, & More Red Rocks, NV

There are a lot of camping options of every type at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We settled into a spot at Government Wash, a popular and free (with a National Parks Pass) dispersed camping area close to Las Vegas, planning to stay for 2 weeks.

In Nevada, we are now on Pacific Time and will be for the next few months. Michael works Eastern Time hours. This works perfectly for us since we are morning people anyway and this schedule gives us enough daylight hours to explore in the afternoon before the sun sets around 5 pm.

The first thing we had to do was check out the Hoover Dam, the American engineering icon that tamed the Colorado River, created Lake Mead, and shaped the entire southwest.

When it was built in the 1930s, it was the tallest dam in the world at 726.4ft. The last time Lake Mead was full and overflowing the spillway was 1983.

US 93, the main route between Pheonix and Las Vegas crossed on top of the dam until 2010 when the 900ft tall Memorial Bridge was completed and diverted traffic away from the dam. It’s the second-highest bridge in the US.

We biked the Historic Railroad Tunnel trail. The trail had great views of the lake.

This was our first time seeing the absurdity of Las Vegas. I always imagined our first trip involving a lot of alcohol, food, and hopefully some beginner’s luck. However, we were in the middle of a dry January, afraid to remove our N95s (will this ever end?), and weren’t feeling particularly lucky.

So instead of doing all the typical things, we just walked around and gawked at all the fancy hotels and bright shiny lights, which were quite entertaining.

We were transported to Italy at Caesar’s Palace and the Venetian…

We went to Paris…

We checked out the Bellagio…

And our personal favorite…the Wynn… Yes, this is where I’ll stay if I ever desire to stay at a Vegas hotel.

Another afternoon we went to Freemont Street/downtown Las Vegas, where the original casinos are located.

Vegas is definitely a place you could love or hate and even without a true Vegas experience we were more on the side of loving it. We will go back sometime and stay at the RV Park at Circus Circus.

On Saturday we drove an hour along the entire north shore of Lake Mead to a place that’s been on my travel list even before RVing – Valley of Fire State Park.

We did the White Domes and the Seven Wonders/Fire Wave trails on rocks that look like rainbow sherbert.

On Sunday, we decided we’d had enough of Government Wash and left early. There’s something about a reservoir that provides water to the southwest and part of Mexico (not to mention most of our fruits and vegetables) drying up that is just too depressing to look at every day.

We moved over to another free dispersed camping spot on Lovell Canyon Road in the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas which put us much closer to our next destination as well.

After a very busy week on the other side of town, we mostly just stayed home.

The one day we left was to visit Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. There is a one-way scenic drive with several overlooks and trailheads. We did the 2 mile Calico Tanks trail.

On Friday afternoon, we drove an hour into the abyss of no cell service to stay at Death Valley National Park for the weekend!