G

Glen Canyon Dam

With an engineer in the family, it is no surprise that we get to visit lots of large engineering projects like dams. .. Wetook a tour of the Three Gorges Dam still under construction at that time in China; we have twice toured the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead near Las Vegas, NV; and of course earlier in this trip we saw Imperial Dam near Yuma, Arizona. But we had never visited Glen Canyon Dam about which we have all read so much in recent years. Luckily, we got there before the environmentalists succeeded in tearing it down and it was not too big a detour for us to take it in en route from Navajo country to the Grand Canyon.

As is our usual practice, we did our driving in the morning, got to Page before mid-day and by the time lunch was over we were happily ensconced in a motel and ready for our dam tour. Lake Powell was visible from our motel, although not from our room. It is rather a shock to the eye to see all of that blue amidst so much desert red, brown, and yellow. It took us only a few minutes to drive from our motel, across the bridge to the visitor center where we signed up for the next tour and moseyed around enjoying the fixed exhibits about the construction of the dam.

Turbine Room

Turbine Outlet Area

The tour covered the usual things. There were lots of statistics about volume of concrete and so forth that the engineer of the family lapped up like a kitten with fresh milk. The rest of the family found it ho-hum.

Dam and head of Lake Powell

Lake Powell Boat Area