Mead Me There

This has to be one of the hardest entries to do.

Cos other than taking a few photos of a lovely sunset at Lake Mead - the largest reservoir in the United States, we pretty much didn't do anything else here. So it's kinda hard to write about nothing.

Since I'm failing miserably at entertaining our readers, I'll at least try to pass off some geeky facts about Lake Mead as a blog post.

Lake Mead was formed in 1936 as a result of the damming of the Colorado River by the great Hoover Dam. It stretches 180km behind the giant concrete wall and across 2 states - Nevada and Arizona.

With a surface area of 640 square kilometres, the reservoir is almost the size of Singapore (700 sq km.) Just imagine an entire city sitting within all that water with cars, trains and expressways running across its surface. If you're Singaporean, that imaginary picture makes the little red dot you're living on seem even more puny.

If you hail from a country which, when placed on a map, isn't entirely obliterated by a mere letter in its name, then the imagery won't get you very excited (see, we get a kick out of living on an itsy bitsy teeny weenie island!)

Since it really wasn't possible to visit all 35 cubic kilometres of Lake Mead, we just popped in for a visit along the Nevada end of the lake. With traffic heading towards the Hoover Dam at the pace of a sickly snail, it took what felt like forever to reach the shore. By then, the brilliant patch of blue we spotted from our car had turned into a pink pool under the 4.30pm sunset.

Blue for the early birds; pink for the slow coaches

Boats docked at the marina. Too dark and cold for a late afternoon sail at 4.30pm

No, I wasn't peeing into the long grass when taking this pic. Just for the records.

Clouds sweeping across the sky turn a darker pink

Kungfu Panda's not happy with the slacker sun who refuses to stay out beyond 5pm. Hiii-yah!

As for the Hoover Dam - nah, didn't visit it. We managed to sneak a peak while driving through the area. The preview of the grey monstrosity couldn't entice us to join the line of cars heading for the giant concrete slab.

And with that, it was back to Phoenix and on the flight to our next destination....

...SAN FRANCISCO! (again)