Glen Canyon Dam

In an earlier post, I said Glen Canyon Dam is smaller than Hoover Dam.  Well, I guess it depends on how you define it.  Hoover is taller, Glen is wider, Hoover holds more water, and Glen has more tons of concrete.  Glen Canyon is definitely less full of tourists, which is good!

We went on a tour of the dam.  Very interesting hearing how they have to have to control water so closely.  The water in Lake Powell supplies millions of people down river.  The fact that more people are moving into the area downstream is causing lots of problems.  Electricity is just a by-product of the dam, control of water is the real purpose.  Interesting point was that the nearby coal power plant makes three times more power. 

Down at the bottom are two acres of grass.  The grass keeps the dirt from eroding while the dirt reduces vibration from the water flow in the pipes.  John and another guy on the tour just wanted to play a round of golf!

We got to see the electric generators.  They were rebuilding one set.  Since I used to manage repairs of large gearboxes, it was fascinating to see what they had to do.  They have a machine shop within the dam to do any machining they need to do.  That would certainly have made it easier years ago at the Uhrichsville plant.

Morning Walk

We’re staying for a week in Page Arizona.  It’s right on the border of Arizona and Utah.  Besides being on Lake Powell, it’s also outside the Grand Canyon.  There are beautiful views everywhere with red sandstone along with bright green spring leaves.  This morning I took a walk on the butte behind the RV park.  I even saw a coyote walking past the nearby houses.  Very cool!

‘Speaking’ French

Horseshoe Bend is a great short hike with a stupendous view.  One of the fun things while traveling is all the people you meet. Today we were visiting Horseshoe Bend when I was asked to take a picture of a group of people speaking French.  After taking two years of French in high school (just a few years ago), I was able to dazzle them with the seven words I remembered.  They laughed at me, but I think they appreciated it.  And, yes, I took their picture while they reciprocated by taking our picture. 

We took another hike today to Hanging Gardens. That one was interesting.  The hanging gardens isn’t really much, but it was a fun hike.

Page is on Lake Powell.  It isn’t quite as big as Hoover Dam, but it’s pretty big and definitely gorgeous.  The colors are just amazing.  John and I are dreaming of living on a houseboat on the lake for a month or two (won’t do it, but it’s a nice dream).

Our life is ruined

I think we’ve seen the last of cliff dwellings and pueblos for a little while.  We’ve been saturated with ruins over the last few weeks in New Mexico and Arizona.  At least each one is unique in one way or another.  I’ve got to say, though, that the exhibits aren’t that different from each other.  I think we’ve learned enough about manos and metates (grinding stones for grains) along with use of the yucca plants and trade among various cultures.  The funny part is when national parks give conflicting stories of the same thing.  One park said that cinders from the Sunset Crater eruption helped farming by keeping in moisture.  Another one said that is wrong and a change in rainfall made it easier to farm.  Even the National Park Service can’t come up with a common story?

Walnut Canyon is full of cliff dwellings.  You go down 240 steps (the equivalent of 18 stories), walk a short path, and then climb back up.  The park even keeps a defibrillator handy for people having problems with the climb!  We met a couple that we saw at the crater hike.  We all agreed that climbing these stairs was much easier than the crater.  We all fell asleep early the night we climbed the crater.

There were a lot of small dwellings in these cliffs.  You can walk into some, but most you see across the canyon.  Unfortunately it used to be typical for tourists and ‘professional’ looters to come in and remove artifacts.  They even dynamited walls so they could get better lighting and access more items.  Very different now!

We also did a short stop at Lowell Observatory (yes, I like observatories).  This is where Pluto was discovered.  Well, Pluto wasn’t here, but you know what I mean.

Screaming at Holes

Wupatki is another of those national parks that I’ve never heard of before our trip.  The park has six pueblo ruins you can visit along with many more you can see from a distance.

I love walking through the ruins.  They say the average height for men was 5’3” and 5’1” for women.  So at 4’10” I don’t feel so short.  Matter of fact, I can laugh at others trying to walk through the doors!

The fun part of the park was a blowhole.  It’s a hole in the ground that either blows out cool air or pulls in air depending on atmospheric pressure.  Today was wild on how much air was blowing out.  We had fun talking to a couple of ladies from Japan that spent a lot of time here.  They were screaming into the opening and made us scream too.  BTW, I’d show you a picture of John screaming but the wind doesn’t move his hair as much.

We see a lot of lizards while walking around ruins.  I love the more colorful ones!

Forest Life

We’re slightly north of Flagstaff near Sunset Crater Volcano.   Our plans were to stay at the campground at Sunset Crater, but it turns out it doesn’t open for 5 days.  Luckily there is boon docking available in the national forest just across the street.  So, instead of staying in an expensive campground with other RV’s ten feet from us, we’re camping free in a forest of wonderful smelling Ponderosa pines with a view of Sunset Crater in the distance, in sight of Abert squirrels and deer, and with the nearest RV over 100 yards from us.  It’s a tough life.

Our little RV is pretty big compared to others camping here.  About half of the people are in tents even though it’s getting down to freezing temperatures at night.  Most come in for just a night.  Others, like us, stay for several days.  The limit at a spot is 14 days, but normally you can stay longer by just moving to a different site.  Since the west is full of places like this, I wonder how many people spend all year camping for free.

Sunset Crater is a volcanic crater with lava flow and other volcanic rocks.  One of the hikes was short, but very steep up a cinder cone.  It’s really weird.  The trail looks like it’s been covered with cinders, but it’s the whole mountain surface.  The crater you see at the top looked like a parking lot.  Similar cinder cones outside the park are being mined for cinder so that soon they won’t exist. 

BTW, since I’d just spent a week at lower elevations, the 7000’ elevation steep trail was very tough for me. Afterwards we heard on the news that Olympic swimmers come to Flagstaff to train in high altitudes.  One of them died this week, though they aren’t sure what caused it exactly.

Our second hike was on a lava flow.  While we just hiked on a lava trail in El Malpais, this was different.  This is newer (1000 years versus 3000 year), but the lava was much more broken up.  I guess this is why Hawaiian has so many names for lava since it can vary so much.

Snow in April

John wanted to make sure I share this picture.  While I was on my business trip, John moved the RV north to Flagstaff.  The town is at a much higher elevation than our last stop.  So, instead of the 100 degree days he just left south of Flagstaff, he saw snow. What fun!

It has been difficult at times adjusting to weather changes.  As we move temperatures can be widely different.  Also, we’re moving up and down in elevation so the same hiking distance may be easy or hard depending on whether we’re used to the elevation.