Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona

The next day we went to Glen Canyon Dam. Glen Canyon Dam is blocking Lake Powel near the mouth of the Grand Canyon.  It is 16 feet shorter than the Hoover dam and produces the same amount of power (approximately 4.5 billion kilowatt hours annually).  For some reason the security around the Glen Canyon dam was more relaxed than it was around the Hoover. Maybe it was just that there were fewer tourists. When we were trying to get into Hoover our truck, camper, and Thules were searched.  When we were getting into Glen Canyon we just drove in and had a picnic on the front lawn.  There was no search or anything. There were as also surprisingly few tourists, we might have seen about 10 other people there. We spent about 20 minutes in the visitor’s center before our tour.  Before going into the dam we had to be checked for weapons and such. Before going through the metal detector we had to remove any metal objects. I personally only had a phone, but some people had metal on their boots, belts, earrings, hats, shirts, zippers, necklaces, and handbags. One woman was getting POed because she had a coat with metal, a belt with metal, and a bunch of other things.  When her belt buckle the size of a credit card got caught in the metal detector she was asked to remove her belt.  At this point she starts yelling at the guards “Well you’re practically asking me to strip down etc…” she had also been through the metal detector three times and I was trying not laugh.  After that we got to an elevator that took us down about 100 feet. We went out onto the dam and saw various exhibits about the turbines and cables used

in the dam. Apparently the turbines had just been replaced with stainless steel copies. Originally they were cast steel, and they had started to rust. Next we went on another elevator, this one going down about 500 feet, by this point my ears were popping like crazy.  Since the dam is so big it has several miles of hallways, in light of this all the workers ride three wheeled bikes to get around. At the bottom there is a two acre section

of grass over where the generators operate. Shockingly there aren’t many golfers working at the dam, it seems like the perfect place. We saw the eight turbines where the power is made and that pretty much ended the tour. My favorite part was the view from above. I could see the river and the sand bar stretching into the canyon.