Have You Seen Hoover Dam Lately?

007

Charter Member
May 8, 2004
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Podunk, WI
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...

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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....


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Right near that spot was this big contraption. I believe they use it to trolly things back and forth acrossed the gorge...


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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...


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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...


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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...


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Then here's the Hoover Dam, from Nevada, looking at Arizona...


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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...


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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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People out there still use "dial-up?"

Nice pictures. I haven't been out to the dam since they put in the parking structure, but I had heard about the construction under way out there.
 
I was there years ago on my way to Vegas where I lived for a short time and it was no different then. My friends and I actually waited for traffic to thin out a little by smoking a joint :lol:

In one of your pics, it looks like a mule on the side of the road on the left hand side. If that's the case I wonder if it's the same one that was there when I went through. That would be wild.
 
I was there years ago on my way to Vegas where I lived for a short time and it was no different then. My friends and I actually waited for traffic to thin out a little by smoking a joint :lol:

In one of your pics, it looks like a mule on the side of the road on the left hand side. If that's the case I wonder if it's the same one that was there when I went through. That would be wild.

Hmmm... OK... a mule... I don't see one... :shrug:
 

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