A long day of fun

So today Jenna and I traveled up to Hoover Dam...  I left here at 5:40 AM to pick her up and then we drove the 4 1/2 hour, 280 mile journey to the Dam.  We got there around 10:45 and then after a minor fiasco of spending an hour trying to parkwe were able to explore the dam (I drove past all the parking on the Arizona side thinking there was better, closer, parking on the Nevada side of the canyon, there was not, and we got stuck in the 45 minute, one lane traffic jam to get back to the dam from Nevada...) ... We went on the full tour and explored the power plant, the diversion tunnels, the air shafts inside the dam, looked out from an air vent in the middle of the dam, and the top of the dam and visitor's center...  it was very cool to see the dam up-close and realize just how massive it really is at 640 feet tall...  

Inside the Nevada side generator room at the base of the dam.  Hover Dam's 19 generators produce enough electricity for 1.3 million people (for a sense of scale this room is 600 feet long and 8 stories tall):

View of Arizona side of dam from the observation platform atop visitor's center, the dam is about 640 feet tall from the river to the top of the towers:

Looking 600+ feet down at the power station and Colorado River from the top of the dam, fortunately a gust a wind did not push me over the side....

Me with "Flat Stanley" (Long story...) at the Dam before our tour inside in inner workings of the structure:

More pictures to come tomorrow...