Lake Need Part 2

Posted At : February 19, 2008 8:51 PM | Posted By : Admin
Related Categories: Lake Mead

After the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was Overton Beach, we continued on down the road and stopped at a couple place on the west side of the road (land side, no lake) to see what it was like. There were some nice picnic areas and a really cool red rock formations. Then we got down to Callville Bay.

There was actually water there, and boats, and people. BUT, you can see how high the water used to be.

In this photo we are way up at the top of the boat ramp at the store/restaurant. See the white rocks in the foreground? That is how high the water used to be. All of those cars would be under at the bottom of the lake.

This view is looking off to the northwest. You can see all the sad dried up lake land. At least there is enough water left to have proper marina where you can rent a house boat.

We went down to explore the boat options and were surprised to see that they had 65' house boats for rent. We were intrigued and checked them out. One has a jacuzzi on it and all of them had water slides. I want to rent a house boat and bum around the lake, but I can't imagine there are enough deep parts that we can get to. And wouldn't you be worried that if you slid down the water slide you'd whack into the bottom or some rocks?

These final sad photos from Callville Bay are taken looking at the west end of the bay. If you didn't know this was taken at Lake Mead you could mistake this for just a regular old Nevada desert scene.

So Callville Bay was bittersweet. You could see the dramatic change in water levels, but at the same time there still seems to be plenty of water left for general recreation. In the boat rental shop they had a graph posted with the water level info. This website shows the info. You can see the current level is almost as low as 1965. They say this is one of the wort droughts on record. If it follows the same pattern as '65 then we are due for an upswing. Let's hope.

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Lake Need

Posted At : February 18, 2008 9:35 PM | Posted By : Admin
Related Categories: Lake Mead

On Saturday Joe and I decided to explore the Lake Mead. The National Recreation Area is huge and on the map it looks like a vast water system with so many narrows, bays, inlets and several marinas.

I have been hearing for several years about the drought and the dangerously low water level at the lake. Most recently this report came out. I thought the photo on the article was photoshopped. It can't really be that bad. After all, when we drive across the dam going to AZ you can see the water line, but there is still plenty of water up there.

Joe and I decided to explore the Lake and see what it was like. We started by driving up to the Valley of Fire and crossing over to the Overton Arm at the north end of Lake Mead. The map makes it look like a pretty decent lake, and if you look at the
Google Map shows docks and a decent water level. What we found was a lake in serious need of water or a renaming. Perhaps instead of Lake Mead it could be Crusty Dirt Mead, or maybe Don't Mess With Nature Mead. Here are the photos: From where we are it is about 300 yards to the water.

You can see there are few fools who actually came down and launched their boats from here. Those are the trucks with trailers parked down there by the water.

This is looking off to the northwest. All the purple scrub brush is where water used to be recently, and beyond that you can see the dry lake bed. So much is gone.

This is looking southeast. The muddy sand piles used to be a chain of islands.

We walked all the way down to the water and were slightly encouraged by the inkling of life. These ducks were hanging out, but honestly I don't know what they were doing there. I can't imaging this being the best habitat around, what with it disappearing and all.

The spookiest part was the desolation. The map indicated that there was a ranger station, a store, a campground, a marina. What we found was a ghost town. Everything was shut down, not a soul around. There were old gas pumps that looked like they hadn't been used in ages. Even the people who had come to launch their boats weren't in the immediate area, which contributed to the abandoned feel. The worst part was the loooooong boat launch. We walked all the way down to the water and back up. It is a steep hill and I was breathing hard. I must have been about 300 yards long, but you can tell that at one time it used to be only 100 yards to the water. So surreal.

We decided to continue down North Shore Road and stop at various places on the way to see what else was happening at different coves. Stay tuned for part 2 of the saga.

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