random thoughts – Day 1,311 – (Thursday) – dam

Hot damn. Thursday already, and the week is flying by. 

The dam from the bridge.

Today was road trip day with a visit to Hoover Dam and the Mike O’Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. I had been to Hoover Dam many, many moons ago and very little about the surrounding area felt familiar. All I remembered from that visit was that we walked across the dam, I took a ton of film photos, and we ate at some really cool little diner.

This trip included four of us walking over the Memorial Bridge from the Nevada side, past the apex and onto the Arizona side. Two stayed back at the car in air-conditioned comfort. After the bridge, we drove to the dam, and my middle niece and I walked down to the dam and crossed from the Arizona side back to Nevada. We didn’t get very far into Arizona either time, but we’re counting it as a state visited. 

After the dam, we stopped at the Lake Mead Visitor Center where I was able to get my favorite travel souvenir – a commemorative smashed penny. Two, actually, because the first one didn’t come out so great. I love smashed pennies because it is fun to crank the handle and unlike other souvenirs, they take up next to no room. I also am amazed by the business concept of making the customer provide the raw material (a penny), pay for the production (fifty cents) AND provide the physical labor. And I fall for it every time I see one. It's brilliant, and if I could plant penny smashers all over the place, I would.

Beside the penny smasher, the gift shop was really good, and the worker at the counter was a friendly local who provided several tips for lunch in Boulder City, our next stop.

Now mine.

We ate lunch at The Dillinger in Boulder City, one of the spots mentioned by the park service person. We walked in hungry and each of us ate happy and felt revived. Then it was off to several great antique and gift shops where several of us found treasures. I got a pink Asian jacket that the store operator told me was from the estate of a local woman who had a modest home and a massive wardrobe. She traveled extensively including many trips to Hong Kong, where many of her wardrobe items were made. I was prepared to pay the full ticket price, but the shop owner knocked it down by $13 without my even asking. Sweet! The planned wedding outfit for the weekend might be switched up to accommodate the latest acquisition.

There were several other gorgeous jackets from the same estate and I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t also tempted by the purple one, the green one, and the gold one. If not for the cost of getting them all and the slim chance there will actually be places to wear them, I would have. There was a time and place in life that I wouldn’t have thought twice about it and would likely have had (or created) dozens of opportunities to wear them all, but that was a different phase in life when things were social and exciting and before moving an extensive wardrobe halfway across the country and then back again.

I tried to convince my sister and Mom that we (meaning they) needed one of the very elegant hats displayed on a back wall and especially a gold lame one that looked almost like a sunrise or a crown, but they were not biting. If not for the cost and the practical aspects of transport home, I might have bought it. As one shop operator pointed out, there was a post office nearby. This attempt at being a financially responsible adult is not always that much fun, but I’m sure I’ll thank myself when, over time, there is incrementally more travel money available.