Las Vegas/Disneyland Trip - Day 1: Hoover Dam, Part 2

After walking over and around the top of the dam, we headed over to the cafe by the parking garage for lunch.  It was good to get out of the hot, bright sun.  I had a ham and swiss on rye with fries.  It was 11:30am and we were supposed to be in the waiting area for the noon tour 15 minutes beforehand, so we scarfed down our food, made a dash to the car for water and sunscreen, then booked it over to the visitor center and back through security.  We made it at exactly 11:45am, and most of the other tour members were there as well.

This pipe carries 96,000 gallons of water per second - enough to fill an olympic-sized swimming pool in 7 seconds.

Waiting for the elevator down to the power plant.  Our group of approx. 15 merged with the power plant only tour for this part.

8 turbines in the power plant on the Nevada side.  You'll notice the 4th one down is missing because...

...it has been pulled out for maintenance.

The dam tour group of about 15 people (designated by wrist bands) left the power plant folks in the power plant and continued on the dam tour

Hallways inside the dam

This tunnel leads to the air vent in the side of the damn I mentioned in the last post

Here's the view from the vent

This hallway leads away from the air vent tunnel to...

These crazy steep emergency evacuation stairs.  I don't normally post blurry photos, but I had to include these.
Looking up.

Looking down

Looking down again

Our tour concluded with a short elevator ride which exited here.  Back in the day, this was the entrance to the dam for visitors.

Another shot of the Memorial Bridge

A shot with the power plants

After the tour ended, we took a few more photos and headed back to the parking garage, stopping on the way to the car to check out the gift shop (which was a bust).  We got in the car and drove to the Arizona side which is now basically a short out-and-back drive.  There are some free parking spots on the Arizona side which were constantly mobbed, but we waited for a spot and parked for a glimpse from the other side of the dam.

Here's the Lake Mead side of the dam showing the intake towers and the water level

Here's a similar photo from the 1983 flood showing the water level near the top of the dam and the water going over the spillway.  Photo from the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.  www.usbr.gov

We then got back in the car and drove back toward US93.  There's a parking lot there near the base of the bridge with stairs and a path that will take you up to the pedestrian walkway along the road.  We hiked up there and walked about halfway across the bridge to take photos of the dam.

As seen from the Memorial Bridge

Landscape shot

Todd took this excellent panoramic and the pictures below

The walls along the top of the dam are only about waist high.  It's sad to think of the level of idiocracy (love that movie!) that require these signs to be posted all along the top of the walls.

Here we are!

Next post:  Vegas, baby!