Another amazing sunrise at the end of 8 Mile Road here in Lake Mead NRA:

We had a productive morning in homeschool:

I worked with our son on a button and LED project for Arduino that illustrates the use of for loops and arrays:

Meanwhile, our daughter continued her work in Scratch:

After lunch we went for a farewell kayak trip.  It took a bit of work to get out of our local bay and be able to look south into the vastness that is Lake Mead, North America’s largest manmade lake.  The far shore is about 10 miles away, and that’s across the narrow axis of the lake:

In this photo of our return paddle, our RV is visible just to the left of the leftmost kayak:

The kids wanted to have a “campfire” using tumbleweed.  The stuff burns really fast:

A moment of truth came when we had to leave our campsite and tow our RV back to the main road.  There’s a 500 foot long climb with an average grade of 10%, max grade 13.5%, and that’s rutted gravel.  I put the Sorento into “4×4 low” mode, and in 2nd gear at 10 mph and 3000 rpm, we climbed out without any slipping or skidding.  Very impressive!  I’m glad I bought off-road tires for the SUV a few months back.  Here’s a view down the hill towards our site, but it doesn’t really convey the steepness very well:

Here’s an elevation profile of the hill:

Leaving at sunset, we headed back to Boulder Beach to dump/fill/shower/fill/dump, then drove another couple miles to the Hacienda Casino where we’re overnighting in the parking lot.    See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

We will miss Lake Mead NRA, and will definitely come back again!