The Hoover Dam was really neat to see and is a great engineering achievement, especially considering it was built nearly 100 years ago. Interesting fact: the dam is nearly as thick wide at the base as it is tall!
The Grand Canyon was amazing. It takes a lot to impress me and I was impressed by the canyon. It is huge! It is really a breathtaking site - probably one of the more impressive things I've ever seen. In fact, I was impressed by all of Arizona. It is a really pretty state. Its scenery ranges from mountains to deserts to valleys. I had no idea there would be snow capped mountains there (or that the Grand Canyon was 7,000 feet above sea level). I really enjoyed Arizona. It kind of makes the flat Midwest seem boring.
Below is a picture of the power plant for Joe. Hop over to Sarah's blog for more stories and pictures.
interesting that the generators are standing on their ends. Actually I can think of a good reason for this though the bearings required to do this must be massive.
ReplyDeleteThe floor of the Grand Canyon isn't any where near 7000 ft above sea level, more like 1500 ft. Arizona is also one of two states that don't change their clocks.
Joe
Yeah, the actual part of the generator that you can see is only a small percentage of the whole thing. It actually extends several feet down below the floor. They have cut-away models at the dam that show how the whole device looks.
DeleteYep - I meant the rim of the canyon was ~7,000 feet above sea level. The canyon is ~1 mile deep, making it about 1500 feet above sea level.