When I was a kid, my family traveled to Lake Mead multiple times a summer. Mom and dad packed the boat, the camper, and loaded us kids up and drove from Orange County to the lake.
For the most part, my brothers and I slept in the camper until dad would yell through the window that we were coming up on Hoover Dam.
We would wake ourselves and get into position: my brothers were manning the windows from the bed at the top of the camper and I would situate myself in the biggest window from the dining area.
We didn't press our noses to the glass to absorb the beauty that is the Hoover Dam...we didn't appreciate the Art Deco...we weren't at all interested in the general awesomeness of the giant slab of concrete.
We were looking for THE BIG HOLE. It terrified us. We kept our eye on it as dad drove by it. We feared it was going to suck us, the truck, and the boat in and we would just keep falling forever.
It didn't matter to us that the big hole is a spillway...we knew what it really was...it was where bad children were tossed.
*Flash forward almost 30 years*
I am much older now and can appreciate the Hoover Dam...over the years I have walked across it, been on the Dam Tour, been side by side with it from my dad's boat...I even drove over it with Kealoha on our summer vacation a couple weeks ago. I consider myself mature, wise, and brave but I will tell you that the sight of the big hole still terrifies me. If I didn't have to keep my eyes on the road and my hands at 10 and 2...I would have been staring down that hole as we drove by it.