Hoover Dam

We had to go and see the Hoover Dam while we were so close. We decided to go on the hard hat tour which took us through the tunnels and walkways, by the generators etc in the dam. The history of how they built such an amazing structure back they was just inspiring and impressive.

This was facing one of the air vents that were about half way down the dam on the front. I have to say for Aaron's sake that there was a large grate that we had to walk across to get to this vent and it went down farther than you could even see, totally freaked me out so that's one of my prominent thoughts when I see this picture....
The generators. The power that is generated here is just incredible.

This is one of the bridges that was built I believe to "detour" all of the traffic from going over the dam. There is actually a pedestrian walkway across it that you'll see a picture from next. It was VERY high....

The dam pictured from the bridge

This was another one of the highlights about the dam which some might miss. They of course had to divert the water while building the dam so they build 4 LARGE diversion tunnels two of which are still diversion tunnels in case the water level gets too high and needs to relieve some of the pressure from the dam. It's actually only been used twice, once as a test and once when the snow in the mountains combined with rain melted all at once and caused the water level to increase rapidly and actually overflowed through the diversion tunnels for 63 straight days.

The things sticking up behind us are actually how the water goes in to generate power. Quite neat (there are 4 total)

The entire park was quite phenomenal. I would suggest it if you're ever in the neighborhood!