Sight · Lake Mead National Recreation Area
A remote eastern-shore stop for primitive launches and desert-cove views.
Overview
Map
Plan your stop
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Lake Mead Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Lake Mead National Recreation Area. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Lake Mead audio tourRecorded for this place
South Cove: A Simple Shoreline Stop“South Cove is coming up, a simple shoreline stop on Lake Mead's eastern edge. Choose it for a picnic beside desert-cove views, with shaded tables and a much more basic setup than a marina.”
Plays as you drive up to South Cove in the Parkwolf Lake Mead Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
South Cove is a day-use and primitive-launch area on the eastern edge of Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near a Joshua tree forest. It suits visitors looking for a simple stretch of shoreline, a picnic or a basic campsite, and access to the water away from the recreation area's marina towns.
The area has primitive campsites, a vault or composting toilet, an information kiosk, trash facilities and shaded picnic tables. There is no food service at South Cove; Meadview, about 10 road miles away, has dining and a few stores. A drinking-water supply is not confirmed in the available park information, so bring your own water and food.
South Cove once had a marina, but falling lake levels left it too shallow to operate. It relocated to Hemenway Harbor in 2002, leaving South Cove as a primitive shoreline destination rather than a marina stop.
Blue water winds into pale rocky shoreline, with desert ridges beyond. Include a strip of rocky foreground with the narrow inlet and mountain line behind it; that shows how the water cuts into the desert.
Wildlife
525 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
116 sightingsBurroMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
18 sightingsBald EagleMost seen around 4 PMSighting map
99 sightingsWhite PelicanMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
145 sightingsGreat Blue HeronMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
106 sightingsTurkey VultureMost seen around noonSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Lake Mead. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
Parkwolf’s Lake Mead ranking
The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
