Week in the desert, part 3

We come, now, to Tuesday afternoon. All three of us have reached sensory overload, from SEMA, so the time comes to travel south, for the obligatory dam thing.

(click on any image for larger version)

We approached Lake Mead around 2:30 in the afternoon,
crossed to the Arizona side, and took a few pics from the parking lot of the souvenir stand atop the bluff.

We then made our way back to the Nevada side of things, and took stock of the construction of the new bypass' bridge which will eventually span the gorge.
I'm told it will be one of the tallest in the world, when it's done. I can believe it. See that little tiny thing dangling from the crane in the center of the picture? That's a basket with some men standing up in it, and they're directly this side of the pylons. I won't be going up there any time soon.

My sister egged us on into taking the tour of the dam, so this claustrophobe/acrophobe had her plate full for the next hour... looking down upon the dam thing from inside the visitors' center,
then looking at its guts
(this is where they force the river down these gigantic pipes, past the turbines which drive the generators, to create the friction which gives us electricity).

And here are the generators. I guess almost every tourist gets a snapshot of this view,
but our tour guide said very few would ever have the opportunity to see this:

The innards of a generator had been pulled out for cleaning and repair -- this particular part had, she said, not been out in the air since its first installation, more than a half century ago.

Pretty cool, no?

Well, about this time, my batteries decided they were too pooped to shoot, so I had to wait until we were back up topside, in the gift shop, before I could get any more pix. My seester promises me she will send me copies of hers, and she's the one who got the image of the sun dog behind the cranes.

But, even with new batteries, we didn't have much daylight left, so we made our way back up to LV, then back down to Primm, where my seester and I spent an hour or so playing in the outlet mall attached to the hotel/casino, followed by supper in the casino cafe, and then back to our rooms for fitful slumber.