Lake Mead to Red Rock

Michael is processing veggie oil before we go on to explore some of the Lake Mead area. We are at an overlook over a long green valley that was formerly a cove. Now the water is drawn down to be about a mile from here and glistens invitingly from this little parking lot mesa. Michael has set up to stay out of the dry wind for the next five hours or so. He usually processes about 23 gallons at a time, enough for a tank and then some. I’ll go down and explore with Sasha.
We find the valley to be a sea of tamarisk. There are a number of ruins of buildings on the flat plain, an old town called St. Thomas, that had been flooded in 1935 when Hoover Dam was completed.









Later, we find that the lake is down about 100 feet after a seven year drought. We camped above it and had a beautiful sunset and sunrise and a languid enjoyment of being warm and on a beach, even though the water was too cold to swim in.









When we went on we decided to cross Las Vegas and go to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in the Mojave desert. Again we found that the ancestors enjoyed the same springs and canyons that we do. We also got good views of bands of bighorn sheep.