The Whole Dam Story (explicit)

This Memorial Day weekend, I drove up to Las Vegas from Phoenix to visit one of my college roommates. I've been asked to recount the events of that drive in a blog post. Warning:: Some material may not be suitable for children.

The drive consists of approximately 6 hours of surprisingly lovely desert landscapes and sparse plant life. This particular trip, I was blessed with an extra hour of lovely desert landscapes and sparse plant life. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Let's back up a few hours.

It all began on a beautiful Saturday morning. I loaded my car, checked my tires, filled up with gas, grabbed a gigantic Powerade and beef jerky and off I went. Together with a GPS borrowed from my sister, I was unstoppable. For the first few hours anyway. (Did I mention the gigantic Powerade?) When I finally stopped for a break, I tucked the GPS into my bag and went inside.

Side note: Public restrooms are a unique place. Second only to the notorious crowded elevator, a crowded public restroom has an extremely high risk of awkward silence. Back to the story.

It was at one of these uncomfortably silent moments in the stall that the woman inside the GPS in my purse firmly stated, "Lost satellite signal. Recalculating." She repeated it twice more. Nobody asked why my bag was talking. This day and age, I suppose it isn't terribly uncommon for objects to speak to us.

An hour and half (and two disappointing chicken strips) later, I was approaching what I was sure would be the highlight of the drive. On the Arizona/Nevada border, as most of you know, is the Hoover Dam.

At this time I would like to remind you all that it was a holiday weekend. "Prepare for delays," the signs read. Good thing I'd laid off the Powerade!

I've never seen so much dam traffic in my life. I was creeping along at about 2 miles per hour when the woman inside the GPS politely asked if I would like to "switch to pedestrian mode." Even she couldn't believe my car was capable of moving so glacially. I continued this pace for about 20 minutes before I could even get a dam view. (I must say, it's not nearly as big as I thought it would be.) In spite of the fact that it was putting me an hour behind schedule, I enjoyed having a while to get a good dam look. The dam architecture was very interesting, as well as the dam statues and a memorial to those who died building it. There's a large dam bypass being built (in order to avoid the dam traffic in the future) which I got a good view of as well. It looks absolutely horrifying. It seems to be about a million miles above the dammed river. I think I'd rather deal with the dam traffic than risk the dam bypass.

Anyway... Apart from all the dam tourists running in front of my car, it was an interesting dam experience. (Not to be confused with a "dam interesting experience." That would be inappropriate.) My time in Vegas was relatively uneventful, but extremely refreshing. Great weekend.

I did, however, take a different route home in order to avoid the whole dam mess.