Our original plan was to visit the Hoover Dam, then drive to the Grand Canyon. Let me tell you, that's ambitious for any family. But for this family, it took a good 3 hours to get everyone up, showered, fed, and loaded in to the car. Then we still had to program the Garmin, decide to ignore the Garmin, read the mapquest directions, decide to ignore the mapquest directions, and finally create our own version of "how to get to the Hoover Dam" which got us there around 11:00. Not quite the speedy start we needed to keep driving to the largest hole in the world. So here is everything we accomplished on Monday:
In case you get super-drunk in Vegas and just start driving around. This will help orient you again.
Yeah...Troy and I stayed far away from the edges. Vertigo!
The back side of the Dam (where the water goes through the turbine things and converts in to energy - enough to power all of those lights in Vegas!)
This is the other side where the water shoots out and helps crops grow...or something.
Those concrete towers in the upper left corner are the makings of a HIGHWAY that will soon connect one side of the Hoover Dam to the other. Yeah...good luck getting people to drive over that!!
Ryan is checking out the construction.
Then they took us to the basement to see Megatron.
Now they're explaining how to save the world if the Dam is ever attacked by Transformers, again.
He's not pointing to it in this picture, but we're standing in one of the four diversion tunnels they blasted out of the mountain to re-direct the water. (which made sense. I mean, you can't just build a dam with thousands of pounds of water rushing at you. The water has to go somewhere. But it all made sense after they showed us the "how to build a giant dam without any beavers" video.)
These are the turbines that churn the water and convert it to energy. I'm pretty sure I remember him saying they're really heavy and they rarely break. Then I tuned him out and started looking at the marble floor. I was also really sick this day. I had a sore throat that felt like razor blades every time I talked. So I didn't talk. Or listen...apparently.
This is Troy and about half of our Dam tour group. (those jokes never got old, by the way)
This is the "Hercules Powder" they used to blast the diversion tunnels.
This is my own "Hercules" trying to convert his man-power in to electricity.
Yup...Dam jokes are never NOT funny.
In case you get super-drunk in Vegas and just start driving around. This will help orient you again.
Yeah...Troy and I stayed far away from the edges. Vertigo!
The back side of the Dam (where the water goes through the turbine things and converts in to energy - enough to power all of those lights in Vegas!)
This is the other side where the water shoots out and helps crops grow...or something.
Those concrete towers in the upper left corner are the makings of a HIGHWAY that will soon connect one side of the Hoover Dam to the other. Yeah...good luck getting people to drive over that!!
Ryan is checking out the construction.
Then they took us to the basement to see Megatron.
Now they're explaining how to save the world if the Dam is ever attacked by Transformers, again. 
He's not pointing to it in this picture, but we're standing in one of the four diversion tunnels they blasted out of the mountain to re-direct the water. (which made sense. I mean, you can't just build a dam with thousands of pounds of water rushing at you. The water has to go somewhere. But it all made sense after they showed us the "how to build a giant dam without any beavers" video.)
These are the turbines that churn the water and convert it to energy. I'm pretty sure I remember him saying they're really heavy and they rarely break. Then I tuned him out and started looking at the marble floor. I was also really sick this day. I had a sore throat that felt like razor blades every time I talked. So I didn't talk. Or listen...apparently.
This is Troy and about half of our Dam tour group. (those jokes never got old, by the way)
This is the "Hercules Powder" they used to blast the diversion tunnels. 
This is my own "Hercules" trying to convert his man-power in to electricity. 
Yup...Dam jokes are never NOT funny.
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