Hoover Dam

3/1/2018

 After our stay at Lake Havasu, we traveled north to the Thousand Trail Resort in Las Vegas.  Our first touristy thing to do was to visit nearby Hoover dam.

 The tour of the dam also includes the hydro-electric power plant. 

 This one of the many bolts used to mount the massive turbine generators.  The most impressive thing about the dam is its enormous size.  The tour was interesting even though we had previously seen the dam and generator installation located up stream on the Colorado river at Page Arizona.

 The tunnels leading to the pen stocks are carved through the solid rock cliffs on the Nevada side of the dam.

One of the 30 foot diameter penstocks.

 There is a duplicate set of penstocks located on the Arizona side of the dam feeding water to the 12 turbines on that side.

 The spillway tunnels on side of the dam is also carved through the solid rock cliff walls.  The water in the dam has filled to require use of the spillway only twice in its history.  The current era drought has drawn the water level down to within 400 feet of causing a shutdown of the turbines.

 Shown here are the eight turbines on the Nevada side of the dam. Note the the lights on the top of each indicate that only three of the turbines on online generating electric power.  The turbines are brought online in response to electric loads of the grid.

 Although we did not see any of the shows while in  Las Vegas, we did drive the length of the strip on a very busy Sunday.  The streets were packed with crowds of people.

Our next stop was Death Valley National Park.