The trek out from Racetrack was nearly as wearisome as the way in. We bounced and jostled our way back to pavement in just slightly better time than the opposite direction. Presumably the compression of our spines was already complete and we were able to handle a hairs width more speed during our egress. The day progressed into a protracted and sweaty mix of travel and chores. We passed out the Nevada side of Death Valley, through Beatty, and drove onward to Las Vegas. We stopped in Vegas only long enough to buy groceries. Then, from Vegas we moved up into Lake Mead National Recreational Area and finally to our evening’s campsite. It was called Boulder Beach Campground and was scenically located next to Boulder Beach RV park. It looked more or less like a trailer park.
Throughout this process it was over one hundred and five degrees and a desiccating wind was blowing about 25 mph. We blessed the installation of the freezer for its delivery of ice, but despite the intake of cold fluids it was oppressively hot. The campground was set above the high water line for Lake Mead, so it was easily half a mile above the actual water. We went down to the lake for sunset and were struck by how much garbage the artificial beach had on it. It was pretty disheartening and Celine doesn’t do well with trashy environments, so we went back to the van and spent the evening above the covers with the fan blowing down on us.
The next morning, before the heat of the day had drained us again, we went down to Lake Mead to re-experience the grandness of our little beach strip. Just like a landfill, this artificial beach had its own land mover that scraped and rolled the garbage beneath a fresh layer of dirt. The beach from the night before was scraped clean, and the trash from years past was visible only by the elements that poked through the layers of turned dirt. Celine still did a clean-up and quickly amassed a garbage bag’s worth of debris from our 40 foot section of beach.
We’d had enough and after a quick dip to cool ourselves for the trip we headed to Hoover Dam.