Location / Name: Lake Mead RV Village at Boulder Beach, 268 Lakeshore Road, Boulder City, Nevada 89005 http://www.lakemeadrvvillage.com/boulder-beach (702) 293-2540

Date: 10/09 – 10/10/2016 (2 nights)

Lake Mead was not our initial destination after leaving Lee Vining, CA for our Yosemite visit. I had planned on staying west of Las Vegas at Fletcher View Campground, a USFS campground which has some electric sites. However, I didn’t get around to making reservations soon enough, and there was no room when I tried to reserve a site. I looked around for other places near Las Vegas, which was an appropriate travel distance distance for the day, and where my wife needed to pick up a prescription at CVS Pharmacy. I checked out a few commercial campgrounds in Vegas online, and didn’t really like anything I saw. When I expanded my search to east of Las Vegas, Lake Mead National Recreation Area showed up. It looked good, and although it made our day from California longer, it shortened the trip to Grand Canyon – a good thing since I needed to make sure we got to the walk-up-only campground on the Grand Canyon South Rim early. I called for reservations, and our destination was set. My reservation timing error for Fletcher View turned out to be a good thing. There was a CVS and an Albertson’s just a few miles from the RV park at Lake Mead, the park was nice, and the views from the site were awesome.

General description of park/area:

Lake Mead is a beautiful lake downstream of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. It is formed by the famous 600’ high Hoover Dam (formerly Boulder Dam.) Lake Mead provides grand vistas and many recreational opportunities. We chose to use our day driving around enjoying the sights, and for a visit to Hoover Dam. The dam itself was quite busy, and parking was at a premium, so we chose instead to take the walk along the new US 95 bridge walkway, which provides great access to views of the dam.

The Lake Mead RV Village at Boulder Beach is in Boulder City, Nevada, a nice town for a visit. It’s also only about 35 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, if you want to spend some time there. If you’re looking for casino action, there are casinos within a few miles of the campground. 

General description of campground:

The Lake Mead RV Village at Boulder Beach is a bit of a misnomer – probably less than one half of the “RV Village” is set up for transient RVs. Most of the Village are permanent mobile homes. However they are nicely kept; clearly vacation housing for folks who take pride in their ownership. The village is on tiered levels which provide views of Lake Mead on each level in the RV section.  There are basic supplies available in the store at the office, and our experience was they are good people who are manning the operation. A campground hostess was available to escort you to your campsite and to help you if you arrive after hours. The campground is clean, well laid-out, and sufficiently roomy.

Access: Easy access to the RV park, and within it. Paved roads and gravel driveways, no impediments.

Site: We were in site #806, a pull-thru site near the entry to the park, nearly right across from the bathhouse. It had full hookups, including cable, but the cable fitting was broken. They had a part at the office, which they gave me to install, and we got 44 channels. The metal picnic table is movable, but quite heavy. We moved it into the shade of our trailer, which made it quite a pleasant place for dinner and a game of Settlers of Cataan. The site is gravel and quite long. I could have parked two combinations of my T@b and Highlander in the length. The site has a concrete patio which was about 6×20 feet. While we were close to our neighbors, it didn’t seem too crowded since each site pulled-thru in opposite directions, and the neighbor was at the other end of the long site. There was a tree between each of the two concrete pads in the median.

Electric: 50/30/20 amp at all sites. I used a basic analyzer/surge protector, and the 30-amp circuit passed the tests. It did not test for high/low voltage. The post was in the middle of the site next to  the water. Standard 25’ power cord reached without problems.

Water: Water connections are available at all RV campsites. I didn’t hook up.

Bathhouse: The bathhouse was about 50 yards from our site. The doors required card keys to get in; you need to request additional keys if you need more than one. There was a laundry in the bathhouse building overlooking the lake. The bathhouse was clean and functional, with a few problems:

• The dressing area for the showers was common for both shower stalls, so no privacy from others coming in to take a shower.
• The dressing area was separated from the main part of the bathhouse only by a curtain; in the women’s room that curtain was split in the middle and blew open whenever someone came in the bathhouse door.
• In the men’s room one of the showers had a tub leak, so the dressing room floor got wet.
• One of the toilets required 2 or 3 flushes to be effective.
• There was no urinal in the men’s room.

Sewer: Sewer hookup at sites; did not notice a dump station.

Cell / Wifi / TV Service: Good Verizon cell service; good 4G hotspot service. Wifi was available for one device at a time, but we didn’t use it. Cable TV got 44 channels; didn’t try OTA. Cable connector on the post was broken, but the store had the part needed to make it usable, and the (very busy) lady gave it to me to repair the connection.

Trash disposal: Dumpsters are located at the end of each driveway; and a recycling station was near the bathhouse at the middle of the driveway. This made it inconvenient for us to get rid of all trash at the same time.

Cost: $38.18 per night for full hookups, one of the more expensive places we’ve stayed. However, due to the location – on Lake Mead, near Las Vegas – it seemed reasonable, and would have been more so if the bathhouse issues were fixed. We would have gotten a discount had we been Good Sam members; they didn’t provide an AARP discount.

Supplies/Food: Boulder City is just up the road a few miles. You can get anything you want… We shopped at CVS and Albertson’s.

T@b Note:

I relied on my GPS for routing, and didn’t check the route. I left Lee Vining about 2 gallons shy of a full tank, and didn’t want to top it off at $3.69 per gallon. When we passed through Benton, CA 50 miles later, we had ¾ of a tank, and I chose not to stop at the gas station there. That was a mistake. There was not another gas station for 160 miles on the route our GPS took us. We really enjoyed the route, down through Fish Lake Valley and up past Palmetto, NV, a silver mining ghost town. But after passing closed-down gas stations where I was expecting to fuel up, we didn’t enjoy the last few miles, when our gas warning light came on, and especially when the car’s trip computer said “Distance to Empty: 0” for the last few miles into Beatty, NV. We had been praying for the past 30 minutes, and as we turned into the gas station at Death Valley Nuts & Candy, you can’t imagine the emotional relief (and thanks) we felt, having NEARLY run out of gas in the desert.

As a side note, it was 27 degrees when we left Lee Vining early in the morning; it was 91 degrees when we set up on Lake Mead. We really appreciated the T@b’s Alde and air conditioner – both on the same day.