Labor Day at Lake Mead, NV
Just back from a CRAZY fun weekend up at Lake Mead, NV with our good friend Tessa Stephenson, her crew, and her parents! I’m sure you have read the articles that claim that driving traffic is down this year for Labor Day, but having done the drive to Vegas before … we opted to leave early on Saturday morning (6am) instead of joining the traffic jam leaving town after work on Friday.
After a couple quick stops to load everyone up, we grabbed our coffee and hit the road! The sunrise was amazing, but the recent fires made the skyline downtown look like a cutout against the smokey background (yuck). A quick 4.5hours later, we arrived in Boulder City Nevada and headed down to the lake to join the party! A quick ride on the ski boat later and we were on the other side of the lake near the big party boat that was docked near the beach. Everyone was enjoying the nice 80 degree water, floating around on their pool noodles, and enjoying the toasty 90 degree desert heat – and we were excited to join. Since we had rented the jet skis for the day, we had to call it a day at 5pm, but made a fun detour on the way back to pull up to the Hoover Dam and check out the new bridge that is being built over the top. After 9/11 Hoover Dam was identified as one of the top 5 terrorist targets in the US (the old road went right on the top of the dam!). So in an effort to improve security, a new bridge is being built that towers over the top of the dam instead of running right along the top.
Back at the house, we all settled in for a great dinner of Salmon, salad, and garlic Texas Toast. The sunset is amazing out there, and Emmit and Toni’s house had quite the view of the lake and mountains from the top of the bluff. After dinner we all had fun playing with a fun assortment of sweets in the fondu fountain, and of course watching the opening weekend of college football on the big screen 
The full day of sun had left everyone pretty drained, so we called it a night relatively early (11pm?!) and decided to get some sleep so that we could get up the next morning and do it all over again!
Saturday was pretty much the same lake excitement, we loaded up the boat with coolers and food and headed out for a secluded cove on the far side of the lake. We had to get there early to strategically stake our claim – but the early start was well worth the effort as the winds picked up later and left us with a relatively calm cove to enjoy. SJ managed to get a nice dose of rope burn tubing, and I manged to tweak my ankle water skiing – but other than that it was fun all the way around! We had rented the equipment till 5pm, but pretty much everyone was ready to call it a day at 4. So, we packed everything up, zipped across the lake, and were back to the house by 5-5:30 in time for lasagna dinner and another amazing sunset over the lake.
Monday morning found everyone sad to part ways and head back to the city, but we figured the earlier we got on the road the easier the traffic would be. Having done the return trip before, we knew that it could be up to 8 hours on the interstate. Luckily, we got out early enough to avoid most of the chaos and got home in about 5.5hrs. We got everything into the house, flipped on the fans, and proceeded to take a long relaxing nap on the couch
Thanks again to Emmit and Toni for opening their house to all of us – we had a ton of fun and were sad to see the weekend come to a close!
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