Hoover Dam and Lake Mead Recreation area

We spent a good 6 hours on our first day of the trip to Las Vegas area at Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead recreation area. Our original plan was to go see Bryce canyon or Grand canyon. A blizzard ruled out those plans. The decision was to see what we could within a two hour radius of our hotel. 

San and me have seen the dam and lake as well as west Grand Canyon on a mini plane tour from Henderson when we were newly married! That was ages ago and we don't even have a way to replay those mini VHS tapes these days!  This was our chance to see the dam, up close and personal.

So we went on the "dam" tour!

This tour takes more than an hour and is twice as expensive as the regular tour but totally worth it. 

Lake Mead is behind this 750 foot tall 600+ foot wide monstrosity! If you see the larger version of the pic by clicking it you will see four shield shaped markings on the concrete.. 

You can see one of them on the center of the picture above. It is actually one of four air vents that balances the air inside the dam so that the concrete cures. Concrete takes years to cure. This one is to cure in 125 years. So they keep monitoring the moisture content and curing rate of the concrete from inside the dam. 

Concrete sets in an exothermic reaction. The designers of the dam used special steel tubes to vent the heat from the setting concrete to cool it down while building the dam. Otherwise there was no way it was built that fast. They had a refridgeration plant cool down the concrete through these tubes while pouring blocks of concrete 5-6 foot tall at one time.. 

You go through these nicely finished tunnels to reach one of the four air vents on the tunnel.

This is the view of the end of the air vent from the inside.

and that is what you see when you look out of the vent. A mighty Colorado river that runs in a very controlled way out of the dam!

After seeing the view from the vent, we also got to see the staircase that runs up and down the dam as an emergency exit in those days. 

We also saw the turbine room. There are these LARGE turbines each weighing more than 600 tons that generate electricity. 

There is also a smaller generator that is on the ground that supplies power to the dam itself. The scale of this building and everything in it is simply mind blowing. 

Once the water comes out of the turbines, it exits down through the gates. You can see that in picture below.

 The dam's mid point is the state border between Nevada and Arizona. So the kids had fun magically moving through two time zones and being in two timezones at the same time.. The older kids understood my idea of trying to a collage showing them in two zones and posed for me, but my execution was flawed.. Should have taken more wider angle shots to merge.. 

We spent another hour wandering around the exhibits and the statues of the two angels and drove on to the Lake Mead Recreation area to have lunch. 

It was very scenic spot (stitched shot below)

Will definitely recommend this as a day trip activity for the entire family. If you have really small kids under 3 would not recommend it. The Dam tour can be pretty claustrophobic. 

The parking lot, restrooms, exhibits etc. were world class! Everyone enjoyed it. The kids learned a thing or two about of hydro electric power is generated using stators and rotors and that was really cool. 

We did not know what to expect when we hit the parking lot, but we came out after having a great time!

Wrapping up 2014

2014 has been the year of travel!

Have travelled 190000 miles in the last year but mostly for work. Someday I will travel that for the sake of visiting places, experiencing things and getting to write about the experience.

To wrap things up, we visited Las Vegas over the Christmas break for three days with the cousins.

As usual, we crammed a lot of activities in that short a time. 

Saw wonders.. that were Natural

and Man made ...

While the Red Rock Canyon looked like a prime candidate for another Interstellar shoot and showed us millions of years of work done by nature, the Hoover dam puts things in perspective of how man can indeed move mountains in a few years! 

The last picture is kind of a cross between a man made and natural thing. It is Lake Mead. The largest man made lake created by the Hoover dam blocking the Colorado river. The colors in the rocks above the lake are natural and local to the area!

If the USA could do something like this 80 years ago, it is definitely possible to do a project of this size even today! We need another Hoover to get something like this done!

We also saw another type of man made wonder.. The casinos! The kids were wide eyed after walking into the Venetian and it just kept getting better after that.

Then there was some nice food, an unforgettable Magic Show called the Illusions, a visit to see some exotic marine animals in the Shark Reef, etc. etc.

In the middle of all this I managed to watch my High schools 25th reunion on a live feed late at night from the hotel room. 

We just came back from a looooong all day drive! Time to catch some sleep and start editing pictures tomorrow.. 

2014... so far, so good!

Yosemite National Park - Photoblog

We went to Yosemite with the cousins for Thanksgiving. Finally got to edit the "non- people" photos from the trip.

A long trail to "mirror lake" which turned out to be a dry bed with no water! The board said "mirror lake is a misnomer. it is not a lake"

It is a photographers job to make do with whatever water comes our way while on a trail that promised "lake".. so started shooting reflections of the mountains on any and every large puddle.  So here is a series of photos from the puddle shoot. They are all reflections from small puddles.

Then it was time to see the "lake".. 

the views from this dry bed were fantastic. We had a lone buck grazing there..

We walked by a creek on the way back and I got to photograph anything that caught my eye..

from moss to mushrooms..

For once, a reflection from a creek instead of a puddle..

There must be a lot more water there now after the heavy rains from last week.. but it was a good thing we went during Thanksgiving break. Parking was easy to find, less crowded and the trails were not slippery. That helped us with the climb all the way to Nevada falls on the second day. We spent 6 hours on the trail and my legs were wobbling after the fast descent. Should have paced myself. In trying to catch up with the group after taking pictures, did some bad moves and it took a toll on my knees.

We caught both Vernal and Nevada falls. Vernal falls had a lot more water on our last visit. Still it was a pretty sight. 

On the way to our cabins we stopped by the Swinging bridge. There was some water, lots of clouds and the sunset turned the coulds bright red. It was an unforgettable drive but there are no pictures of the sunset. The legs were trembling and it was time to go drink tea in the cabins!

On the third day we visited two trails while heading out of Yosemite. One was the trail for a Carson falls and the other was Rainbow Push. They were both within 15 miles of the west entrance. It started raining heavily and we had to rush through both these trails. It was a vibrant early morning..

Even HDR images do not match what the eyes saw that morning. 

We made it back through pouring rain. It was a great experience to stay in Yosemite for a couple of nights and spend more time in the park. Our earlier trips have all been day trips with one 2-3 hour hike at the most. 

The cabins at Yosemite lake are strongly recommended. Nice, cozy and a decent kitchen. 

The kids thoroughly enjoyed playing board games and the whole cozy cabin experience!

A big thanks to all those who support the National park system!