Hover Dam and Flagstaff

Today, Sunday 9th September 2012, we head across Nevada to Arizona via the Hover Dam, visit the trading post on the famous Route 66 and then arrive at our hotel for 2 nights at the Little America Hotel, Flagstaff.  Before being allowed to visit the Hover Dam security demands we had to drop off all the luggage at a small hotel/casino called the Hacienda. The Dam is massive, an incredible sight and feat of engineering. 
Hi David,
As we go East the WIFI is either not free or only in the lobby. Hence I am still going to email in the hope that I can copy and paste to the blog later.

Hover Dam Sunday
Long trip by coach today to The Little America Hotel in Flagstaff. This morning we went to the Hover Dam, not that interesting for me. Alan will write about it:-
The dam on the Colorado River at Black Canyon at a point where Nevada borders Arizona was built between 1929 and1935 and was finished ahead of time and below budget. It was part of a major water control and electricity generation project covering the whole Colorado basin designed to supply water and power to much of western America. It also provided employment for construction workers during the depression. The thing is a fantastic period piece of thirties style and technology, and the workings of its (then) state of the art turbines and generators were well explained in a wonderful visitor centre. (Alan)
We stopped off at Kingman for lunch, then a rest/coffee break at an old cowboy town called Seligman. It was full of old equipment and brightly coloured buildings representing shacks from a bygone era. Even an old wooden jail, similar to a log cabin was there; quite how that would hold rough, tough gunslingers I don't know!  We stopped for photos at the entrance to the one road town and again at the bottom for more photos and 'coffee'. I said I would fetch coffee if Alan photographed this part of town. There was some amazing silliness; seriously old car wrecks, (dummies of) ladies of the night on a verandah on  top of a bar, a car with a dummy of Elvis and a lady with a seat in between so you could get a photo of yourself. Good job I called Alan over to take a photo of me on the chair: because ...while I was frantically searching for a cafe (and I was the only one off the coach that found coffee) Alan got distracted and found an (up to date) BSA motorcycle to photograph. All that tacky stuff he could have photographed and he finds a motorcycle that we see everyday back home... Men ah!
Seligman  (this from Alan) is on the famous old highway Route 66 made famous as the road the Okies took to California in the depression (and depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) and in numerous popular songs since.
Finally on to Flagstaff and our Lttle America Hotel. Nick had recommended  Black Bart's Steakhouse and we bumped into Lesley and Duncan looking for it. When we arrived lots of our group were there.The food was very good, if enormous i.e. Caesar Salad was 2.5 inches high on oval 8 x 6 inch plate, and the waiters keep getting on the stage to sing. Very good night out, place was packed.