13 April 2018
Thousand Trails Resort
This picture was taken while standing on the Memorial Bridge.
When we drove past the dam while en route to Vegas last week, there were long traffic jams and 1000’s of people standing every where. Yep, spring break, was then, and over now, hardly any one here today! Timing (or luck) is everything.
Wow, Wow, Wow. “Wow, Awesome, or Holy Cow” are words we commonly use when we first lay our eyes upon a new piece (to us) of America. The Hoover (Boulder) Dam is no exception.
We drove right up to the security check point, where I had to open the BFT’s tailgate and tonneau cover in the back so Security could see I had nothing dangerous in there. We proceeded to the parking garage, paid our $10, and found a spot “just right” for the BFT to spend the day.
When I asked the lady for our tickets to the dam tour she said jokingly “well you don’t have to have an attitude about it”. HA, LOL, A good sense of humor allows her to get thru the day of dealing with tourists.
Our tour tickets were named “The Dam Tour”, it included both the power plant and inside the bowels of the huge 750 high concrete dam. The Dam, which is holding back the mighty Colorado River, thus forming Lake Mead behind it. We have seen a lot of the Colorado river in our travels out here, and I’m constantly amazed just how important this water is to life.
As a side note, the picture below reminded us of the Daleks from Dr. Who…do you see the resemblance?
My solar calculator! I can power 100, 100-watt light bulbs if the sun stayed at “high noon” for 24 hours!
After watching a 20 minute historical movie about the Dam, we waited about an hour for our dam tour to begin (no I wasn’t mad). We roamed through the Visitor’s Center and the observation deck, where the views of the dam, power generation buildings, high voltage lines, and the Memorial Bridge are in perfect view.
Boulder Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River and was constructed between 1931 and 1936. It was renamed Hoover in 1947.
What “arch-gravity” means, is that the dam curves upstream in a narrowing curve that directs most of the water against the canyon rock walls providing the force to compress the dam. The dam only penetrates the canyon rock walls by 25 feet on either side, while it is 726 tall, 45 wide at the top, and 660 wide at the base. Oh yeah, it is 1244 long.
U.S Route 93 used to run right across the dam, but after Sept 11, 2001, there were security concerns so the Hoover Dam Bypass project began. The four-lane Hoover Dam Bypass opened on October 19, 2010. It was named Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge and is quite a bridge. There is a (very windy) pedestrian walkway (which I walked and stood) on the dam side of the bridge. While there are 6 foot high walls along the road of the bridge so motorists can’t slow down to look at the dam, cause they can’t see it.
As we went through the tour, only 3 of the 7 turbines were generating electricity on the Nevada side. The floors we where walking on were an amazing art-deco marble with intricate designs, and the original elevators had brass doors.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, about the white rock when looking at the shores (rock face) of Lake Meade from the dam. That was the water level back in 1983, which now is about 142 feet to the water. The level now is 1086 feet of water at the dam. Full pool is 1229 feet. So it has been decades since the water level was that high, in fact eventually the low water level will affect the electrical output of the dam and the folks downstream. They are installing new turbines that will operate more efficiently with the lower water level.
As we walked into the bowels of the dam, they allowed us to go down a small tunnel that ended in a large 4 x 6 vent. We could stick our cameras out the vent and take a “selfie” up the 150 feet outside of the dam. The goal was to not drop the camera, as it would have been a goner.
We had a great time, learned a lot, and the weather was perfect.
