I recently drove from Reno down to Phoenix for school. I took a class called Electronic Controll Systems which stepped me up to Expert Technician, Master of Chassis status. On the way down to Phoenix, I thought, it would be faster to go acrossed Hoover Dam. What a bad decision that was. The traffic was bumper to bumper and just INCHING along starting somewhere around a MILE from the dam. I was in a hurry, not good. Anyway, I saw all the reasons WHY the traffic was stopped. They'd turned the damn dam into a major tourist attraction. Hey... "Vegas baby"... anything to turn a buck. But I was amazed to see that they were in the process of building a super highway 'bypass' right passed the dam, for those who do NOT want to be part of the tourist trap. Here's the pictures I got...
(I'll apologize ahead of time to you people that have dial-up. This page may take some time to load for you.)
First off, this is where the traffic first stopped, and you can see the highway construction going on here...
And finaly, after about a half an hour, I made it down to the point where I could see the dam. The traffic was kind of on the move here, and I had to stick the camera out the window and click it on the fly. Darn car had to be right there....
Right near that spot was this big contraption. I believe they use it to trolly things back and forth acrossed the gorge...
And then, HERE'S THE BRIDGE they're building. I had to shoot this through my windshield. Good thing I'd just cleaned it, but I had to shoot this on the fly too, and I didn't get the top of the tallest set of supports...
And here's the other side, where apparently it's going to connect! Unbelievable. It's got to be somewhere around a MILE acrossed this gorge. No frigin' WAY am I going to go acrossed THIS thing. If you look close, it looked to me like the blue thing was a crane that had fallen over, and was all bent and twised laying on the rocks...
This is final stretch coming down to the dam, and the bumper to bumper traffic. You can see by the white on the cliffs how far down Lake Mead is...
Then here's the Hoover Dam, from Nevada, looking at Arizona...
And then on the dam going acrossed. Another good look at how far down the water level is in Lake Mead. The last time I was here, 1982, it didn't look like that...
And last but not least, on my way back to Reno, out in NOWHERE Nevada, I saw this strange thing happening in the clouds. I thought it might be a reflection in my window, so I rolled my window down. Nope. I thought it might be something in my glasses, so I took my glasses off. Nope. It was IN the clouds! Something in the clouds was reflecting very brightly the sunlight. It had several different colors in it and a trail. I dug the camera out as quick as possible, but it had dimmed somewhat. None the less, a strange phenomenon...
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