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| At E.T. Fresh Jerky with Shehzadi and a silver flying-saucer sculpture near Hiko, Nevada. |
Part 8 ended back in St. George after Shehzadi carried us through Zion National Park, across Zion-Mount Carmel Highway, and home from a short wade into The Narrows. Part 9 began the next morning with our overlanding Toyota Tundra pointed south: Utah to Arizona, Arizona to Nevada, Las Vegas to Hoover Dam, then north again toward the eastern gate of the Extra-Terrestrial Highway.
This day's route was the longest of the expedition so far, though it had an odd sense of humor about straight lines. Hoover Dam required a long southeast loop from Las Vegas; E.T. Fresh Jerky then waited far to the north near Hiko. River-cut canyon, casino frontage, Depression-era concrete, a reservoir marked by drought, and roadside flying saucers took turns at the window. Nevada had arranged the itinerary by letting geology and kitsch share the wheel.
St. George to Nevada's E.T. Highway — Post Summary
This 2024 overland day carried Shehzadi from St. George through the Arizona Strip, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam, and Lake Mead before turning north to Hiko and the eastern gateway of Nevada State Route 375. Current planning notes are refreshed through August 2026 without quietly rewriting what happened on the road.
| What's Covered | |
| 🚙 | St. George to Arizona and Virgin River Gorge — I-15, the Arizona Strip, river incision, and a Dead Horse Point film flashback |
| 🎰 | Mesquite and the Las Vegas Strip — Nevada arrival, the Paris Las Vegas tower, and a brief casino-corridor detour |
| 🏗️ | Hoover Dam and Black Canyon — Depression-era construction, arch-gravity engineering, labor, and the dam walk |
| 💧 | Lake Mead and current water context — designed storage, exposed shoreline, and August 2026 visitor information |
| 👽 | E.T. Fresh Jerky near Hiko — flying saucers, murals, roadside theater, and practical supply planning |
| 🛸 | Crystal Springs and Nevada State Route 375 — the official E.T. Highway designation and the handoff to Part 10 |
Route: St. George → Virgin River Gorge → Mesquite → Las Vegas Strip → Hoover Dam → Lake Mead → U.S. 93 → Hiko → E.T. Fresh Jerky → Crystal Springs → Extra-Terrestrial Highway
Route at a Glance
- St. George to Nevada Through Virgin River Gorge
- Las Vegas Strip Drive-Through
- Hoover Dam and Lake Mead
- North on U.S. 93 Toward Hiko
- E.T. Fresh Jerky at the Eastern Gateway
- Crystal Springs and the Start of State Route 375
St. George to Nevada Through Virgin River Gorge
Shehzadi left St. George on Interstate 15 and crossed the short Arizona Strip between Utah and Nevada. The freeway entered Virgin River Gorge, where the river and highway squeeze through the transition between the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range. I-15 followed the confined river corridor through cliffs, grades, and bends before the canyon released the road toward Mesquite.
The gorge continued the previous day's river story. We had stepped into the Virgin River inside Zion; now the same drainage accompanied I-15 through northwestern Arizona. USGS research on the river system dates its integration across the Virgin Mountains to less than about 5.9 million years ago and connects its incision with faulting and uplift along the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. The freeway translated that argument into lanes, bends, cliffs, and trucks negotiating grades without convening a geological committee.
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| The airborne Thunderbird in Thelma & Louise. The scene was filmed near Dead Horse Point outside Moab, in the same mesa country where we had watched sunset over the Colorado River earlier in the expedition. |
Beaver Dam Wash belonged to this corner of Arizona, but the movie memory carried us back to our sunset at Dead Horse Point earlier in the expedition. We had sat on the high mesa above the Colorado River while the canyon walls changed through orange, pink, and purple, staying until the last light faded. The airborne Thunderbird in Thelma & Louise had launched from the same country: the Utah Film Commission places the finale near Dead Horse Point outside Moab, at the site now called Thelma & Louise Point. Hollywood moved the Grand Canyon to Utah for the jump. Shehzadi had already visited the neighborhood and showed no interest in reenactment.
We crossed the Arizona-Nevada line and passed through Mesquite. It served as a route marker rather than a long stop: the first Nevada city, a practical break on I-15, and the point where the confined gorge released us into wider basins. The horizon opened, traffic thickened, and Las Vegas began advertising itself well before the Strip appeared.
Las Vegas Strip Drive-Through
Las Vegas was a deliberate drive-through. Casino-scale tourism was not the focus of this expedition, but the Strip is difficult to ignore with a straight face. We left I-15 long enough to pass the Eiffel Tower replica and the Paris Las Vegas frontage, where Europe had been reduced to a traffic signal, a themed resort, and several thousand parking spaces.
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| A quick Strip stop below the Eiffel Tower replica at Paris Las Vegas. |
Our photograph records the stop honestly: two travelers below the tower, no attempt to pretend we had reached France, and no casino review waiting in the wings. Our judgment was narrow and personal. We preferred the road beyond the resorts, where neon stopped arguing with daylight.
The city did not begin with a roulette wheel. Las Vegas's official timeline places the modern town's founding in a 1905 railroad land auction, when the new line between Southern California and Salt Lake City made the valley a water and refueling stop. Hoover Dam construction brought another population surge during the Great Depression. Casino tourism eventually became the loudest layer, but it was not the first one. The Strip had simply become very efficient at blocking the view of its own foundations.
The detour also established the day's geometry. Hoover Dam lies southeast of Las Vegas in Black Canyon. Hiko and Crystal Springs lie far to the north. We therefore crossed the city on the way to the dam and again on the return. Las Vegas was not the destination. It was a brightly lit hinge with unusually expensive refreshments.
Hoover Dam and Lake Mead
Interstate 11 carried us toward Boulder City and Black Canyon. We stopped at the Robert L. Mendenhall Scenic Overlook, where Shehzadi sat above the highway with Lake Mead visible through the rocky gap. The pullout supplied the first broad reservoir view and the day's clearest reminder that every engineering project must negotiate with water, geology, and weather. The first two bring maps. The third rarely reads them.
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| Shehzadi at the Robert L. Mendenhall Scenic Overlook on the I-11 approach to Hoover Dam. |
Hoover Dam spans the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona line. The Bureau of Reclamation's chronology records construction beginning in 1931, the first concrete in 1933, the last dam concrete in May 1935, and the first generating unit entering full operation in 1936.
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| Lake Mead from the overlook: marina, exposed shoreline, and the pale high-water mark. |
The dam rises 726.4 feet from foundation rock to its crest. It is a concrete arch-gravity structure: its mass resists the water while its curve transfers part of the load into Black Canyon's walls. Reclamation built it as interlocking columns of blocks rather than one impossible pour, then circulated ice water through more than 580 miles of embedded steel pipe to remove heat from the curing concrete. The official dam facts sound faintly fictional until the concrete appears below your feet.
The numbers should not wash away the workers. Reclamation lists 96 official industrial fatalities during construction and explains why broader historical totals differ. No workers are entombed in the concrete. That story survives because myths weigh less than 6.6 million tons and travel better at dinner. The labor record requires no decorative tragedy.
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| Hoover Dam's curved crest, intake towers, and the bridge spanning Black Canyon. |
We parked Shehzadi and walked onto the dam. Lake Mead, the intake towers, the curved crest, and the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge appeared in different combinations as we crossed. The concrete geometry looked permanent. The reservoir did not. A pale mineral band traced the canyon walls above the water and marked levels the lake had occupied before.
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| Lake Mead upstream of Hoover Dam; the pale mineral line records much higher reservoir levels. |
Lake Mead is the largest U.S. reservoir by designed storage capacity, nearly 28.9 million acre-feet at its operating elevation. Designed capacity is not the amount present on a given day. Our 2024 photographs show exposed shoreline and the white high-water ring. The reservoir had turned its operating history into a visible stripe around Black Canyon.
Reclamation's May 2026 infrastructure announcement connected declining Lake Mead elevations directly with hydropower performance. The agency approved investment in maintenance and wide-head turbine technology designed to work across a broader range of water levels. Concrete can remain where engineers put it; a reservoir is under no obligation to cooperate.
Updated August 2026: Hoover Dam reopened to visitors on July 31, 2026 after crews repaired a cableway-system issue that had caused a brief closure. The dam and powerplant had continued operating. Visitor access, tour availability, and security rules can change, so the official Hoover Dam page outranks any travel post—including this freshly polished one—when the gate is involved.
North on U.S. 93 Toward Hiko
After Hoover Dam, we retraced Interstate 11 through Las Vegas, turned north, and followed U.S. 93 toward Alamo, Hiko, and Crystal Springs. The route left the Mojave lowlands and approached Nevada's colder Basin and Range country.
The Bureau of Land Management describes south-central Nevada as a transition between the Mojave and Great Basin ecoregions. Creosote bush and Joshua trees dominate farther south; sagebrush becomes more characteristic to the north. The change did not occur at a painted border. It arrived plant by plant while Shehzadi kept the same speed and the thermometer kept its own counsel.
Basin and Range geography gives the drive its repeating rhythm. Long mountain blocks rise beside broad internal-drainage valleys, a pattern created as the crust stretched and faulted across the interior West. U.S. 93 follows the easier valley floors, then climbs low divides before dropping into the next basin. From the cab, the road appears to aim at one range, negotiate with it, and immediately receive another assignment.
The route passed the Pahranagat Valley communities of Alamo and Ash Springs before reaching Hiko. We did not turn the supply corridor into a separate sightseeing episode, but it mattered operationally. Shade, fuel, food, and mobile service became less dependable west of the junction. Remote-road romance improves sharply after the tank is full.
Travel Nevada advises refueling around Alamo or Ash Springs before heading west, while Nevada 511 provides current road conditions. In 2026, Rachel again has a fuel stop, but remote-business hours remain a poor place for optimism-based mathematics.
E.T. Fresh Jerky at the Eastern Gateway
E.T. Fresh Jerky stands on U.S. 93 near Hiko, at the junction serving State Routes 318 and 375. The day's roadside theater gathered here: smoked meat, Area 51 warnings, flying-saucer sculptures, murals, souvenir signs, and restrooms whose reputation had traveled farther than several Nevada towns.
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| Shehzadi beside the silver saucer sculpture in the E.T. Fresh Jerky lot. |
The first lot photograph pulled back from the hero image. Shehzadi and a metallic spacecraft stood side by side, each making a quiet claim to be the sensible vehicle for remote Nevada. Only one had cup holders we trusted.
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| The Area 51-themed welcome mural at E.T. Fresh Jerky. |
The storefront leaned fully into its theme. A mural welcomed travelers with cowboy aliens and Area 51 lettering. The display was roadside art, not evidence from a classified test program, and the distinction improved rather than diminished it.
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| Area 51 warning placards and alien props beside the store entrance. |
Warning placards advised visitors to beware of aliens, restricted zones, UFO crash sites, and other hazards apparently reviewed by a committee with an excellent printer. Green alien feet waited below the signs. Nevada had found a way to convert secrecy into a photo stop without declassifying anything useful.
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| The two roadside saucer sculptures in front of E.T. Fresh Jerky. |
Two saucer sculptures occupied the frontage, one weathered dark and one bright silver. Their engineering specifications were unavailable. This was probably for the best.
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| The store frontage, ramp, and saucer displays at the U.S. 93 junction. |
The wider storefront view shows the ramp, open flag, saucers, and gravel lot. The current Travel Nevada listing places E.T. Fresh Jerky at 12600 U.S. 93 in Hiko and describes it as a pit stop at the junction of the Extra-Terrestrial and Great Basin highways. Hours can change. Flying saucers are more reliable as landmarks than as business calendars.
Crystal Springs and the Start of State Route 375
A short distance west of the store, Crystal Springs marks the eastern beginning of Nevada State Route 375. The Nevada Department of Transportation says the 98-mile road between Crystal Springs and Warm Springs received the Extra-Terrestrial Highway nickname in February 1996. Tourism marketing built the name around nearby military ranges, classified flight testing, and decades of UFO lore. Bureaucracy had finally found a way to put a flying saucer on a road trip without widening the shoulder.
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| A sticker-covered E.T. Highway photo sign near the eastern junction. |
Our photograph shows a sticker-covered E.T. Highway sign near the eastern junction. It is captioned as a photo sign rather than the current official NDOT installation. NDOT replaced and raised the official sign in 2019 after stickers and graffiti made the earlier one unreadable. Nevada's aliens apparently have adhesive-backed supporters.
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| Joshua trees mark the Mojave–Great Basin transition on the eastern approach to the E.T. Highway. |
Beyond the sign, the two-lane road ran through Joshua tree country toward the open basins west of Crystal Springs. The vegetation still carried a Mojave accent, while the colder Great Basin waited farther north and west. This was the physical threshold of Part 10: pavement, range fronts, sparse services, and a road name that had already done most of the publicity.
This episode stops at the threshold. Part 10 continues west on State Route 375; the deeper E.T. Highway stops and the eventual descent into Death Valley belong to that next day on the page.
The day had crossed three states and several versions of dry country. The Virgin River supplied the geological thread from Zion to the Arizona gorge. Hoover Dam interrupted the Colorado River with concrete and turned water into storage, electricity, law, and argument. E.T. Fresh Jerky turned secrecy and UFO folklore into roadside commerce. Shehzadi connected them all, which is what an overlanding truck does when the map has lost interest in genre.
Next Stop
Part 10 begins at the eastern end of the Extra-Terrestrial Highway and continues deeper into Nevada: the Alien Research Center, Rachel, Little A'Le'Inn, roadside art, mining towns, Rhyolite, and the descent into Death Valley.
Reference route map of The Vagabond Couple's 9,000-mile USA & Mexico overland roundtrip: Map-1 and Map-2.
- The Vagabond Couple and Shehzadi
