HooDam!
Las Vegas was fun, but alas it was only a one night stand.
Time to move on to bigger things. Hey, speaking of bigger, how about the
largest dam in the US of A! That's right, Hoover Dam! Named after the great
vacuum company because it sucks all the water from the Colorado Plateau through
its 2.8 Gigawatt generating turbines, leaving the mesas neat and tidy for
visiting tourists. Hey, Nevada knows tourism and now they're teaching it
to Arizona, Colorado and Utah.
Lucky for us we were there in the morning when the temperature was only 112, it was expected to reach 127 around 3:30.
Sure, you've seen thousands of pictures of the front of the dam, but unless
you go there you never get to see the back. Here's what it looks like.The water level is down 35 feet from normal this time of year due to the drought. They estimate only about two years of water is left before they can't supply Las Vegas anymore. If the snowpack doesn't pick up considerably over the next few years. "Las Vegas will cease to exist." At least that's what one of the tour guides told us. But then, he also regaled an elevator-load of trapped tourists with stories like the one about the hotel worker who was abducted by a guest and was later found spread across the desert. This guy had some serious Las Vegas issues he needs to deal with before I want to be locked in a box with him again. |
This is a view from the top of the dam looking downstream on the Colorado
river. If you're a migrating fish, you have to jump about 750 feet at this
point.The Colorado River delineates the eastern border of Nevada, separating it from Arizona. Arizona is on the left side of this picture, Nevada on the right. On one side of the dam they have a huge clock that says "Nevada time" and on the other side another clock reads "Arizona time". Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time, so half the year they are the same and half the year they are an hour different. The employees on the Arizona side never have to change the clock. |
These eight turbines are on the Nevada side of the dam. The Arizona side
has nine turbines. They didn't explain why this is. Arizona gets the least amount of power from the dam. California gets the most power and we don't have any turbines there. |
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