Next to the Last Vacation Post... (Unless I change my mind. Cuz it's my perogative. I can do what I want to do.)

So, we just left the Grand Canyon.

Before you hit Sin City, you have to go over the Hoover Dam. And it is a sight. My appreciation for the Dam multiplied or at the very least doubled, due to the Transformers movie. Hey, I am just a silly girl, not a history/geology/architecture buff. I couldn’t really care less about it. But it was perty in the movie. And, of course it stood between me and Vegas.


It is an amazing structure. It is fascinating that way back when they had barely created cars, they could build something of this magnitude. But ya know, my waxing all philosophic could have also just been the heat stroke I was experiencing.
So, the dedication of the Dam on September 30, 1935 by FDR, included a mural, star map, and winged figures with now quite well-rubbed toes which were designed by Oskar J.W. Hansen. The star map indicates “dates of historical importance, linking the moment the Hoover Dam was dedicated with such events as the building of the pyramids and the birth of Christ. Hansen believed that "in remote ages to come, intelligent people" would be able to discern "the astronomical time of the dam's dedication”.
So… follow me here, guys….on the most modern structure that, at the time, had ever been constructed, the crowning achievement coming out of the Public Works Project, which employed thousands during the Great Depression, on this testament to the genius of the American mind, there is a monument, a map for future visitors to our planet.

On a government project that, in the 1930’s cost $48 million, commissioned by the U.S. government, there stands a roadmap for aliens.

Oh, I understand. Roswell never happened. Area 51 doesn’t hold Martians. Yet the U.S. Government can pay a Norwegian immigrant buttloads of cash to send a message to aliens.
I don’t buy it, but then again, maybe, just maybe, FDR lost his ass at the craps table in Vegas and this Hansen guy bailed him out.