Andrew's American Adventures: To the Grand Canyon and beyond !!!

After a lovely night in the Luxor hotel, breakfast in the most American of breakfast restaurants ("Did you want artificial maple syrup on your artificial maple flavoured bacon bits, honey ?"*), and a wander through the Titanic exhibition, I caught a cab to the car rental center and picked up my car. The guy at Hertz was fantastic, he made sure that I would save $110 on the weekend and gave me an upgrade for free. So I then drove to the Grand Canyon village via the Hoover Dam.

*Ok, so she didn't quite put it like that, but that is what the gentleman at the next table was asked.

I stopped just outside Las Vegas and took a photo looking back at The Strip.

I also stopped just over the mountain range on the southeast outskirts of Las Vegass and took a photo.

Or two.

I eventually made it to Hoover Dam, where it was very hot. 42 deg C or thereabouts.

I stopped at a lookout overlooking Lake Mead, which is the lake formed by the hoover Dam. It has been full once back in 1983.

I went on the tour of the Generator room and saw some of the bolts and tools used to construct the dam.

And most fascinating of all, a concrete sample ... ;)

We went in the elevator down into the mountain to one of the pipes that feed the turbines in the power plant. It's 9 metres in diameter (about 30 feet)

You can see from this photo where we were. (Look for the 30' Steel Penstocks in the middle of the drawing.) It indicates that we were 350 feet below the water surface.

We then went further down into the power plant.

I then went up to the top observation platform took this photo, looking downriver at the power plant and the new bridge.

I wandered across the dam. It was very windy and hot and a long way down.

The intake towers were huge, considering they were 395 feet tall. (120 metres) These are the two on the Arizona side.

The white rock shows the highest level of the lake in 1983. It must have bleached the rock.

The border between Nevada and Arizona runs right down the middle of the dam. Left foot in Nevada, right foot in Arizona !

I walked back to the Arizons side and passed the offical monument for the dedication of the dam etc. It has an interesting star map and various quotes on it, as well as two beautiful Art Deco angels.

The hippie chick on the left was oooing and aaahhing over the star map ...

I got back in the car and stopped for a final photo at an outlook on the Arizona side. (Note: in America, they don't have Lookouts, they have Outlooks. Go figure.)