Southwest, Day 3
Mar. 26th, 2007 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reldnahkramDays 1&2
Day 3 - Hoover Dam (2007-03-19)
Forgot to mention that on day 2, we found the Las Vegas Trader Joe's, which is the only TJ's in the country where they can do wine tastings. We picked up snacks and breakfast stuff.
We got up, packed, ate, and left Las Vegas. Not really my scene, as you may have guessed. We headed east to Hoover Dam. My chief complaint is that there was no place to get a good picture of the whole thing - the facilities are too close to it.
The tour inside was pretty nifty. None of my pictures of the generators came out terribly well. Here's some 30' diameter pipe inserted in one of the original 56' diameter tunnels cut to bypass the site while the dam was being constructed. Please ignore the ghostly specters in this picture.
Underground in the complex.
Here's a diagram of the inner workings...
...and a model of the dam being constructed. It is not monolithic, but rather a mass of concrete blocks. Cooling pipes were installed in the blocks, or the heat generated by the curing concrete (it's an exothermic reaction) would have taken years upon years (125, says wikipedia) to reach ambient temperatures.
Above and below the dam - Lake Mead, the Arizona spillway inlet, the output from the generators back into the river, and the view down river
Contortionist pylons
This is the Nevada side of a cable system stretching across the dam used during construction
A roadway bypass of the dam is currently under construction. The existing road (US-93) is a single lane and has several switchbacks leading to the dam. It's a traffic nightmare. The new bridge is going to be impressively high and provide quite the view of the dam, I should think. Here's some piers under construction, though you don't quite get a sense of just how high this bridge is going to be
Leaving Hoover Dam, we drove around the west end of Lake Mead, eventually joining up with I-15. The stretch of I-15 running through Arizona is really cool; there's a 10-15 mile stretch where it winds through the mountains, following the canyon carved by the Virgin River. It's really cool to be on the interstate completely surrounded by mountains, and yet no blasting or tunnels were necessary to pass through them.
Once into Utah, the scenery became very different, and very nifty.
Day 3 - Hoover Dam (2007-03-19)
Forgot to mention that on day 2, we found the Las Vegas Trader Joe's, which is the only TJ's in the country where they can do wine tastings. We picked up snacks and breakfast stuff.
We got up, packed, ate, and left Las Vegas. Not really my scene, as you may have guessed. We headed east to Hoover Dam. My chief complaint is that there was no place to get a good picture of the whole thing - the facilities are too close to it.
The tour inside was pretty nifty. None of my pictures of the generators came out terribly well. Here's some 30' diameter pipe inserted in one of the original 56' diameter tunnels cut to bypass the site while the dam was being constructed. Please ignore the ghostly specters in this picture.
Underground in the complex.
Here's a diagram of the inner workings...
...and a model of the dam being constructed. It is not monolithic, but rather a mass of concrete blocks. Cooling pipes were installed in the blocks, or the heat generated by the curing concrete (it's an exothermic reaction) would have taken years upon years (125, says wikipedia) to reach ambient temperatures.
Above and below the dam - Lake Mead, the Arizona spillway inlet, the output from the generators back into the river, and the view down river
Contortionist pylons
This is the Nevada side of a cable system stretching across the dam used during construction
A roadway bypass of the dam is currently under construction. The existing road (US-93) is a single lane and has several switchbacks leading to the dam. It's a traffic nightmare. The new bridge is going to be impressively high and provide quite the view of the dam, I should think. Here's some piers under construction, though you don't quite get a sense of just how high this bridge is going to be
Leaving Hoover Dam, we drove around the west end of Lake Mead, eventually joining up with I-15. The stretch of I-15 running through Arizona is really cool; there's a 10-15 mile stretch where it winds through the mountains, following the canyon carved by the Virgin River. It's really cool to be on the interstate completely surrounded by mountains, and yet no blasting or tunnels were necessary to pass through them.
Once into Utah, the scenery became very different, and very nifty.
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Dam!
Date: 2007-03-27 01:49 am (UTC)Re: Dam!
Date: 2007-03-27 01:51 am (UTC)About 45 minutes. 33ish miles, according to GMaps.
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