Reflections on the Hoover Dam

I was watching Jeopardy! a few weeks ago and correctly answered a question about the Hoover Dam that I only knew because when I was 25, I quit my job and spent two months driving around the United States. 

The Smile Project Road Trip was an impossible dream realized through naive optimism and the fact that at no point did anybody tell me no. Together, my best friend (who also quit his job) and I rented a car and proceeded to map out a major pay it forward project throughout the United States. 

We would end up in 28 states working with over 30 organizations whose mission touched every cause space from prison education to refugee services to animal welfare to environmental protection. 

I was working full time basically right up until we left which meant every spare minute was filled contacting literacy nonprofits, finding a campground with an open spot, and, of course, ordering fun magnets for the side of our rental car announcing who we were and what we were doing. 

Logistically, I look back on this undertaking with so much pride. What a wild concept to pull together. How special that we did.

The road trip was a really beautiful time. Oh it was certainly messy. And let’s not forget the big fight we got into at Yellowstone. But overall, the experience threw me out of my comfort zone in a really important way.

I’m a by-the-books person. I read the instructions. I follow the rules. And yet there I was, recently promoted and quitting my job. There I was starting my morning at Barton Springs Pool in Austin, Texas or visiting the Steve Prefontaine Memorial in Eugene, Oregon on a random Wednesday. 

But nothing struck me more than the Hoover Dam. After hiking and camping in the Grand Canyon, we set off for Las Vegas where we’d be working with my friend’s kindness organization and staying with his family. I don’t remember who was driving, but I remember one of us seeing a sign for the Hoover Dam and realizing we could just… stop there?

It wasn’t on the itinerary, but here we were, so far from where we’d grown up in Pennsylvania and Ohio. We looked at each other and shrugged. We did have space in our schedule. We could literally just stop at the Hoover Dam because it’s there.

It was a Tuesday morning in July when we pulled off and got out to look at the Hoover Dam. Neither of us were particularly interested in it—the things that were must sees had been added to the itinerary early—but to this day, I feel so affectionately for it because despite it being the eighteenth day of travel, I will always remember it as the day I realized I could just do whatever I want.

I know that must sound silly, but when I think back on it now, I am hit with such a rush of appreciation for the experience of driving down the highway and remembering that I am in charge of my decisions and therefore my future and my Happiness and my life.

We didn’t do any sort of guided tour. I don’t think either of us were that level of interested. But I can tell you that since that day, I have never once missed a Jeopardy! question about the Hoover Dam or accompanying Lake Mead. 

And every time I get those questions right, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to have had the experience of choice. To be able to break the rules. To decide what is worth pulling over for.