Hoover Dam and Valley of Fire

We woke up early Easter morning and headed over to tour the Hoover Dam. Avery called us out when entering. We told the women she was 3. She is NOT 3, she is 4 and proud!!! Lucky for us she's so dang cute she still got in free.
Hoover Dam is amazing! I'm in awe and impressed with the men who built it. They worked 10 hours a day, every day, with only 1 day off a year. For not much money. A job is a job right? We're learning that first hand with our poor economy now.
We went on the generator tour and were able to go 500 feet into the belly of the damn dam to see for our selves these ginormous machines in action. We also learned that no one actually fell and died in the cement. Jason still doesn't believe this.
After the tour we went into the museum and exhibit hall. It has great interactive games for the kids to play with. They got to create their own generators and control the water intake for a city.




The large pipe behind Kaleb in the picture above is one of the 9 feeding the generators. Water flows through these pipes at 60 MPH at a rate of 80, 000 gallons per second! We could feel the whole room shaking and the noise from the water in our ears was LOUD!
Afterward we headed north along the banks of Lake Mead. On one side of the road is this huge man made lake and the other is nothing but barren desert. We stopped to smell the blooming cacti and kept our eyes open for bighorn sheep. The next day we entered Valley of Fire State Park. The rock here is amazing. I felt like I was back in Moab, UT area. Red rock surrounds the park and we found a wonderful campsite in the canyon. There is a lot of Native American history in the park. We hiked canyons full of petroglyphs. After 8 months of exploring pictographs and petroglyphs I'm still in awe at every one I see. I love sitting on a rock and looking at the land and the artwork and feeling the spirits of the people that once called these lands home.

Where's the meat? That's what Kaleb was wondering. He was bites away from finishing his meal when he realized that he forgot to put the actual burger in his bun. Guess he was hungry.