After our Dam tour, Ryan and I went to explore Lake Mead.

(I will post about the Dam tour later)

There is a small fee, approximately $5 per car, to get into the Lake Mead park, inside you have access to the beaches, campgrounds and marinas.

Once inside, our first stop was a small Marina.

The boat pictured is an authentic paddle-wheeler called the Desert Princess, that offers Lake Mead cruises.

We sat on the dock of the Lake Mead Marina, eating Popsicles and watching the ducks and fish in the water. The water was gorgeous and crystal clear.

Please look at this sign:

It really was 115 degrees that day, Ryan and I tried to catch the high on our rental car thermometer but the highest we got was 113:

One hundred fifteen degrees, in Nevada, is hot, it really is, but it does not compare to 95 degrees in Virginia.  Everyone always says it’s different, it’s dry heat.  It is different.  It is dry.  It is so dry that I think it makes your sweat evaporate.  It may sound strange, but I am a sweater, if I spend a lot of time outside on a hot day (85+ in Virginia), I am going to sweat.  Somehow, while at the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, when it was 115 degrees, I didn’t sweat.  Dry Heat.

The sign says the water temperature was 81 degrees, it felt like 95 degrees, like bathwater.

Lake  Mead surprised me because I didn’t know what to expect. The barren “beaches”, floating marina’s, the mountains, and hundreds of boats, it all surprised me.   I would like to visit again with more time, and a bathing suit, maybe in the spring or fall, when warm water is more welcoming.