Photos from our Motorcycle trip in August, 2005.
Click
here to visit my home page.
Check out this MAP of our trip!
Picture #79 - Hoover Dam
After leaving Las Vegas, we encountered a big rain storm, with thunder striking no more than 500 feet from where we were riding. Soon after that we came to Hoover Dam, seen here from the Nevada side. It is 726.4 feet from foundation rock to the roadway on the crest of the dam. The towers and ornaments on the parapet rise 40 feet above the crest. The dam was built in blocks or vertical columns varying in size from about 60 feet square at the upstream face of the dam to about 25 feet square at the downstream face. Adjacent columns were locked together by a system of vertical keys on the radial joints and horizontal keys on the circumferential joints (think "giant Lego set"). Concrete placement in any one block was limited to five feet in 72 hours. After the concrete was cooled, a cement and water mixture called grout was forced into the spaces created between the columns by the contraction of the cooled concrete to form a monolithic (one piece) structure.
The Colorado River rises in the snowcapped mountains of north central Colorado and zigzags southwest for more than 1,400 miles before reaching the Gulf of California.
The river and its tributaries - the Green, the Gunnison, the San Juan, the Virgin, the Little Colorado, and the Gila rivers - are called the "Colorado River Basin." These rivers drain 242,000 square miles in the United States, or one-twelfth of the country's continental land area, and 2,000 square miles in Mexico. Seven western states and Mexico have interests in the Colorado River Basin.
Index of pictures: [1]
[2] [3] [4]
[5] [6] [7]
[8] [9] [10]
[11] [12] [13]
[14] [15] [16]
[17] [18] [19]
[20] [21] [22]
[23] [24] [25]
[26] [27] [28]
[29] [30] [31]
[32] [33] [34]
[35] [36] [37]
[38] [39] [40]
[41] [42] [43]
[44] [45] [46]
[47] [48] [49]
[50] [51] [52]
[53] [54] [55]
[56] [57] [58]
[59] [60] [61]
[62] [63] [64]
[65] [66] [67]
[68] [69] [70]
[71] [72] [73]
[74] [75] [76]
[77] [78] [79]
[80] [81] [82]
[83] [84] [85]
[86] [87] [88]
[89] [90] [91]
[92] [93] [94]
[95] [96] [97]
[98] [99] [100]
[101] [102] [103]
[104] [105] [106]
[107] [108] [109]
[110] [111] |
|