Boulder City

Saturday morning found us heading out of Caliente for points further south, specifically Boulder City, on the way to Hoover Dam. It's 151 miles from Caliente to Las Vegas, via US Route 93 S, and then an additional 26 miles to Boulder City. Thankfully, we didn't have to go through Las Vegas; we just skirted it from a distance for the easy last leg into Boulder City.

It was obvious when we were getting close to Las Vegas. The traffic level picked up immensely, as did the secondary traffic: trains, trucks, planes. But skirting the eastern and southern edge of town, we veered along I-11, coming close to the Strata Tower, but staying far enough way not to get trapped in the traffic. It was a pretty straight route into Boulder City (population 14,890). The main drag of Boulder City at first seemed to be nothing but fast food restaurants and chain hotels, but we shortly hit the historic district, which was covered with coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and tourist joints.

We drove around a bit, trying to decide which hotel to stay at. In my tour guide, one of the hotels with very good and amusing ratings was the El Rancho Boulder Motel. That recommendation, plus the big swimming pool, retro sign, and Spanish-southwestern architecture, were enough to convince me. Our room was right in the center (ground floor) of the 2-story building below. The rooms were large, with kitchenettes and lots of places to sit and eat and relax. The Southwest Diner next door was convenient for meals and morning coffee. And the pool was pretty empty most of the time we were there--we had it to ourselves on the second afternoon, to cool off after a day at the dam.

It was fairly late on Saturday afternoon when we got settled in to our hotel room, so we decided to just walk around the historic district and get the feel of the place. We wound up having cold beers at The Dillinger, a speak-easy type bar and restaurant, which we enjoyed enough to pay another visit to the next day (plus, the next day was Sunday and a lot of other bars were closed). And keeping life easy, we had dinner at the Southwest Diner, right next door to the motel.

We also checked out the directions to Hoover Dam. It really was just a few minutes away from downtown Boulder City. The below photo shows the approach, with Lake Mead still looking fairly depleted.

On Sunday, at the dam entrance, we were welcomed by a very strict security system, where we had to open the back of the jeep to make sure we weren't posing a threat. I was surprised at first, but quickly understood the need when I thought about it.