As we travel north to Montana, we are constantly blessed by the natural beauty that surrounds us.
Kathy and I were born and raised in the midwest and the beauty we saw there was in the Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan shoreline along northwestern Michigan. If you haven’t spent any time in Michigan, you must do yourself a favor and take a driving tour along Michigan’s northwest coast.
But the scenery we’ve been exposed to these last few months has been so colorful, so impressive and awe-inspiring that I just had to share a few pictures here.
This is a short video showing the landscape up RT 89 north of Congress AZ where we spent our first night at the Escapees North Ranch RV Park.
Our second stop wasn’t really “natural” but man-made. When you take in how massive this project is and what man created here … that alone is beauty in it’s own right.
Looking from pedestrian bridge on Rt 93 to the downstream side 
Looking from the Lake Mead side 
Inside one of the powerhouses
Hoover Dam is an arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on September 30, 1935, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Hoover Dam is 726 feet high. It is 650 feet thick at the bottom and 45 feet thick at the top. The purpose of the Hoover Dam is for power, silt and flood control, irrigation, and water for both industrial and domestic use. When Hoover Dam was finished in 1936 it was the world’s largest hydroelectric power station. The four intake towers (penstocks) on the north side of the dam take in water from Lake Mead and feed up to 91,000 gallons (each) of water per SECOND to feed the two banks of seventeen hydroelectric generators that produce over 2,000 megawatts of capacity and produce a yearly average generation of 4.5 billion kilowatt hours to serve the annual electrical needs of nearly 8 million people in Arizona, southern California, and southern Nevada.
One of the most interesting facts I learned about Hoover Dam (originally called Boulder Dam) is that the design included a HUGE refrigeration plant to cool the concrete as it cured. We were told during our tour that had they not provided artificial cooling to the concrete it could have taken a hundred years or more to cool and cure correctly so as to avoid premature cracking and failure.
Here’s a few pictures of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam showing how much lower the water level is than it was in the past. (It’s gone down 75′ in the last twenty years)
Remember, clicking on any of the individual images below will open a larger view.
Lake Mead from a distance 
Shows a water intake port 
Man walking his dog on the beach 
Downstream side of Hoover Dam with Lake Mead in the background 
The upstream side of the dam as water from Lake Mead is held back
As we headed north from Boulder City Nevada and Hoover Dam, our next stop was Zion National Park.
We actually parked the coach at Ruby’s Campground at Bryce Canyon and then took the car to visit Zion National Park and Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab Utah.
Our site at Ruby’s in Bryce 
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary 
The main building at Best Friends 
Unfortunately, we were unaware that you had to call ahead and make reservations for a tour at Best Friends, so all we were able to do is visit the Visitor Center and take a drive through part of the grounds and see a few horses. They have tens of thousands of acres and lead tours in small vans – something we’d still like to do but just ran out of time (and daylight) the day we were there. Click on the video below of a waterfall in Zion — it’ll zoom right in on the source.
We came back to the coach, spent a second night at Ruby’s and then went on to visit Bryce Canyon National Park the next day. We could take the main road about 12 miles into the park after which the path was closed due to roads blocked by the snow. It would take a few more days/weeks of nice weather to get to the point that the park would be totally open to visitors.
But what we were able to see was Oh So Impressive! (click on any pix for a larger view)
Click on the video below
After visiting Bryce, we took a drive over to Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.
The next morning we hooked up the car to the back of the coach and left Bryce continuing our trek north. We decided not to stop at Salt Lake City, but instead continue on to Rock Springs, Wyoming where we new there was a county fair grounds and event center with 1200 full hook-up sites (water, sewer, electric) and we knew there was a pretty hefty winter storm coming our way. We knew we could hook up and “hunker down” at Rock Springs if we needed to for a few days.
We’ll tell you more about that in our next post. ’til then …. thanks so much for riding along. I just wanted to share with you some of the amazing beauty we’re seeing out west.
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