Grand Canyon Day 1

Johnny just started a new job here in LA. He now works 3 days a week and has 2 days (plus weekends) off.  So this past weekend, April 14-18, was our opportunity to take our Grand Canyon trip.  We drove half way and stayed over in Vegas(i'll post pics of that later). From Vegas the GC is about a 4 hour drive.  We decided to hotel it in a small western town called Williams AZ.  This city is about an hours drive into the GC National Park. 

We arrived in the park Friday afternoon and had planned to stay to see a sunset over the Canyon.  The park is divided into an east and west sides, so on Friday we visited the east side.  This side of the park is accessible by car.  This is a great little drive along the rim of the canyon. The above picture has snow still lying around. 

At the end of the 30 minute drive out to the east side of the park is located the Watchtower.  The watchtower houses Indian paintings.  We climbed the steps up to the top of the tower to get a 360 degree view of the canyon.  This very short climb gave us an an amazing  view.

Here we could see down into the canyon and spotted the Colorado river.

Cool land formations down in the canyon.

Heston found a mountain lion, we are so blessed that it was in the local gift shop and not down in the canyon.

Trent and Dad in the Watchtower.

Sun is setting.

Here we could see the moon!

I have tons of pics.  Since a Grand Canyon trip is a once in a lifetime trip I took bunches of pictures.  I'm sure posting all of them would bore you.  So I will break up the blog postings by each day.  On Saturday we hiked down into the canyon.  That was AMAZING! Be on the look out for that blog posting. 

Hover Dam

       

 Hoover Dam

Managing Water in the West

One of the cool things that we did while our Georgia friends were here was to visit the Hoover Dam.  Visiting the Hoover Dam was on our 'To Do' list while we are living here in California.  So while we were out in Vegas we took the short trip over to the Hoover Dam, which is less than an hours drive.  

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Upon arriving at the Dam we were kinda surprised at how small it was.  The boys have seen the Transformer movie which depicts the Hoover Dam as a GINORMOUS structure, and it is pretty big, just not as GINORMOUS as the movies show.  

The Colorado River flows along a 1400 mile course from Colorado's Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California.  In the early 1900s this river often flooded low-lying farmland and communities in the spring and early summer as it overflowed with water from melting snow.  In late summer and early fall, it often dried to a trickle.  To protect the low-lying lands from flooding, and to assure a stable, year round water supply, the river needed to be controlled.

The construction of the Hoover Dam began in 1931, and the last bit of concrete was poured in 1935.

Before the dam could be built it had to be diverted.  So they dug tunnels for the water to pass through until the completion of the dam.  We were able to walk thru these tunnels on our dam tour.  

Here we could see outside of the inside of the dam (down in the mist of dark tunnels)

  

This picture is the top side of the dam.  The side of the walls that form the lake have a white line made from calcium.  

The Hoover dam is on the state line of Nevada and Arizona.  To walk across is only about the length of a football field. 

Pretty cool place to visit! Glad we were able to enjoy our day at the Hoover Dam with friends.