Wednesday, December 30, 2015

December 22 the Hoover Dam trip

The am of December 22, we picked up a shuttle at our hotel to take us to a terminal to board a bus to the Hoover Dam.


The shuttle stopped at the south end of the 'Strip', that is off Las Vegas Boulevard. There the 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign has been since 1959. It cost $4,000 which compares to the cost of say, the large screen at the Stardust hotel and resort which cost $500,000.  The Welcome to Las Vegas sign is also in the town of Paradise (as is much of the strip) and is about 4 miles outside the municipal boundary so it actually isn't in Las Vegas. 

None of this has kept the sign from being famous and it was placed, in 2008, on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the terminal where we were to pick up the bus to the Hoover Dam, there was an announcement that there was an unused limousine and we could take that instead of the bus for $50/person. We took the deal.  

The limousine driver took the picture of us at the upstream side of the dam (which is to the right of us). To the left and at the same image level as my head is the new bridge which carries US 93 from Arizona to Nevada. There is a clock on each end of the bridge showing local time (Nevada is on Pacific Time. Arizona is on Mountain Time but does not observe daylight savings time). 

The next image is Ann on the observation deck of the visitor's center. In the background is the downstream side of the dam.  The dam is 50' wide at the top and 600' wide at the bottom (a trapezoid, although a tour guide called it a triangle - yes I corrected him). 

We took a tour of, among other things, the power plant.  That day, the plant was running at about 50% capacity, that is, about half the turbines were in operation.  They make the point that the dam is not built to generate electricity, but rather, electricity is a resulting benefit of the water management. 

We had a nice relaxing limousine ride back to Las Vegas - there was some heavy traffic caused by an accident but we were nice and comfortable (also this was a fast day so comfortable seating was nice - and the interesting stuff about Hoover Dam took my mind off the need for eating).









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