Finding a top notch Mexican Restaurant

     Although it is quite a way north of the Mexican border, Las Vegas has always had a reputation (among many others) as a good place to find a great Mexican restaurant.  Today, via Google, I found lists by several rating agencies.  The consensus choice seemed to be the Lindo Michoacan, which was conveniently located in Henderson on the southeastern edge of Las Vegas on our way to visit Hoover Dam.  One of the charming attributes was the table side preparation of Guacamole dip.

     Durelle ordered a shredded beef chimichanga while I went with chile verde with the expected tender chunks of roast pork.

     This is the chili verde and you can see the bowl of Guacamole in the top of the picture.  The style of the restaurant was expansive, yet intimate; elegant, but not overly adorned.  Did I mention the margaritas?  Any great Mexican restaurant must make a great margarita...on the rocks with salt, please!  Due to the upcoming outdoor activities in the Arizona/Nevada sun, we limited ourselves to one and had a big glass of ice water.
     From there it is only thirty miles to the Hoover Dam, a truly massive project the was implemented during the depths of the Great Depression.  I was unable to get any "Oh, Wow" pictures, and there is really nothing to give you a sense of scale.

     The first picture is taken from the dam looking up toward the southern tip of Lake Mead which the dam created.  Note the cordon upstream of the dam which denies boater access.  These days it more to protect the dam than the boaters as was the original case.  All vehicles pass through security before they are allowed to drive over the dam.  
     The second picture shows the downstream side of the dam.  Note that it is arched toward upstream so that the pressure of the water forces the dam to transfer the stresses into the canyon walls.  Although there is nothing visible to provide scale, the dam, itself, is over 760 feet tall and contains over 3 1/4 million cubic yards of concrete.  There was another million or so used for all the supporting structures.  I could dig up a lot of mind-numbingly large logistic facts. Suffice it to say that that it was a breathtaking achievement given the technologies of eighty years ago.
     Just downstream from the dam is the new Pat Tillman Memorial bridge that carries the traffic to bypass the dam.  It, too, was a significant engineering achievement, especially anchoring the bases in the vertical walls of the Black Canyon.

     Tomorrow is the wedding.