We left Grand Canyon amid light snow en route to a boondocking site by Lake Mead. Mead was formed by the Hoover Dam, dedicated in 1935, and once was America’s largest reservoir. In terms of volume I suspect that it has long since been eclipsed by many others: Lake Mead is 200’ below its record volume, and around 125’ below its normal volume. It is 20’ above the mandatory water rationing level, and since Las Vegas gets 90% of its water from Mead, that is not good news for The City Built on Sin. Not that they’re doing much about it; water is still cheap in Vegas, even for golf courses. 25 feet sounds like a lot of water, and is, but the forecasters say rationing will begin by summer 2015. And they said that three months ago when the lake was then ten feet deeper.
What can one do? All I can think of is the lyrics to a Janis Joplin song called “Get It While You Can”. She was singing about something else, but my message is “See it while you can”. It’s beautiful, blue, and cool in early spring. The waterline is maybe 100 feet below us but there are still millions of sun-bleached mussel shells in the packed sand around our boondock site. Yeah, get it while you can.
Back in Wickenburg, AZ, some 40 days ago Kat and I had an excellent Arizona-Mex meal. The big-screen TV was showing innings 6 and 7 of the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez mesmerizing the Colorado Rockies. Opening Day, it was, and although we had excellent cervezas with our chimis and burros, a fellow nearby ordered a Prickly Pear Margarita as we were about to leave. Had baseball not been on, (Kat’s limit is about two innings on TV), I would have persuaded her to stay a bit longer and try one of those exotic Margies.
And while I’ve looked in every Safeway and WalMart from Wickenburg to Bullhead City, nobody stocks the key ingredient to Prickly Pear Margaritas: prickly pear syrup. And then, in the General Store on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, we found it. Yeah, $8 for four ounces, but to taste an exotic drink? Priceless!
Prickly pear syrup is sweet, purplish, and has a faint flavor I can’t describe. “Earthy” is the adjective Wikipedia uses, and I suppose that’s in the ballpark. It’s a different margarita, and who among you has ever had a bad one?
The prickly pear margarita is not Victor Laszlo’s favorite drink, but what is? And who is Victor Laszlo? A shout out from our award-winning photographer (today is Mother’s Day) goes to whomever replies first, correctly, without having looked up the answer on The Google.
Life on the Blue Highways 
Yay!
LikeLike
That’s the kind of criticism we love here at Life On the Blue Highways.
Jackson
LikeLike
Lake Mead is indeed worth seeing — I was impressed. We were there in ’06 when it presumably had quite a bit more water in it.
We found a variety of prickly pear products at the gift shop and visitor’s center at Saguaro National Park East in Tucson. Brought back a bottle of PP BBQ sauce for our neighbor who’d been watching the house for us while we traveled this winter. Seemed fitting to bring a different kind of BBQ sauce back to Kansas City!
LikeLike
You’d be sick at the sight of it, Em. We were at least 100 feet above the current water line and our sandy campground was covered with sun-bleached mussel shells. They’ve been dessicated for at least ten years. Part of the problem is a 14 year drought, and the bigger part is the insatiable demand for water on the part of Las Vegas and to a lesser extent, LA.
San Francisco has a lot of tourism, too, and they use about 50 gallons per day per person. Vegas uses three times that, mostly for landscaping. You probably get by on 10 gallons or less a day per person in your RV. I would think cities in the American west may need to consider rationing water at the 40 gallon per day level. That means curtains for a lot of golf courses, and some carwashes, but it’s that or an Exodus from LV, and eventually, LA.
LikeLike
Loving all of your posts, and the spectacular photos.
Yes, sadly, our extraordinary planet is in some trouble.
On a lighter note, without using Google, I know Victor Laszlo from _Casablanca_.
In short, he was a Czech, a resistance leader wanted by the Nazis, and married to Ilsa, the character played by Ingrid Bergman.
I had to look up his drink online (so no credit for that last part), and since I did have to look it up, I won’t say what it is here, in case someone else wants to play. 🙂
Off to catch up on more of your fascinating posts, and pictures.
Cheers. 😀
LikeLike
Yes, correct: excellent answer. I’m calling the contest settled, drink of choice notwithstanding. The drink was called a “champagne cocktail” in Casablanca, but I prefer to think it was actually a French 75, named for the WW I artillery piece which, thanks to its ingenious hydraulic recoil absorption system, could be fired repeatedly without re-aiming. In a word, the gun and the drink were knock-outs.
A French air ace, Raoul or something, is credited by some as its inventor. He loved champagne, but needed some kick to forget his day, so it included lemon juice, cognac, simple syrup, and half a cup of champagne.
And K.D. is the winner of our Victor Lazslo trivia contest!
Jackson
LikeLike