Wednesday, 10/19/2011

Headed south today to Lake Meade and the Hoover Dam.  We took a back road to Lake Meade and got some beautiful pictures.  As always, there's no way to really capture it in photos, but I've attached a few to give you an idea.  I told Ann today, if anyone had told me how much I would enjoy the "treeless" mountains out here,  I probably would have told them they were crazy, but the fact is, this is some of the prettiest scenery I've ever seen.   
Hoover Dam is just incredible.  We took the tour and went down inside the dam, learned all about it and really enjoyed it.  The size of it is really hard to grasp.  How they ever built it back in the 30's is beyond me.  The workers earned $4 per day, and travelled from all over the country for the jobs because of the depression.  Even in the 30's the engineers/ designers were clever enough to make it earthquake proof to a magnitude of 8.6 on the Richter scale.  Not that long ago, people used to drive across the dam itself, but a new bridge was built to replace it, and it's an engineering marvel in itself.  

We stopped on the way home for dinner at Olive Garden.  Yum!  We haven't eaten there for a long time, and we'd forgotten how much we enjoyed it.