Day 4, Monday, December 15 - Glen Canyon Dam

Having said goodbye to the beautiful Grand Canyon, we hit the road in not too hospitable weather. It was snowing, and our last view was nearly obscured by the bank of menacing clouds that rolled in before 11:00 am. For a while we were afraid we were running into another bad storm. Then the road dropped a few thousand feet (over quite a few miles). It stopped snowing, the sun came out, and the temp rose to about 40 degrees!

At first, the plains were earthy greens and golden browns.

Jagged gashes in the landscape were replaced by soaring peaks, majestic ridges, and wide vibrantly colored plains.

Then the rocks started taking on the shapes and colors of rock candy. The landscape looked as though it were fresh from the brush of a brilliant artist. The pictures really don't do the colors justice. Some of the earth was really blue and green!!!

A sign told us we were in the Painted Desert, and we believed it!

We didn't get a very good picture of it, but after a while, the hills and rocks around us turned red...vivid red. A ridge climbed up out of the land and cut a sharp uneven line in the landscape like an impregnable wall. Every course of it tilted and folded as if it were a gigantic ridge of red whipped cream turned over by a whisk. This ridge rose out of the otherwise flat terrain a few miles from the road and extended parallel to it for miles.

All at once, we curved around towards this ridge, and for a few minutes, it looked as if we were going drive slap up against it. The road slipped up and along the side of the rocks, and all at once, swung around and it looked like the parting of the Red Sea in stone.

The pass was hardly a mile long, and with it ended all sight of the extraordinary formations that had baffled us for so many miles. This land was for the most part featureless, although, every once in a while, an obviously volcanic rock sliced through the earth as if admonishing all passers-by to be aware of the pent-up power beneath their feet.

We reached Glen Canyon Dam around 1:00! The dam was built in the early 1960's to control the flow of the Colorado River. The Colorado river is the lifeline for the surrounding states that are otherwise deserts. The dam controls the distribution of water over a huge area, and even helps regulate the amount water from the Colorado river that needs to flow into Mexico! It is only sixteen feet shorter than the Hoover Dam! It is located in the little town of Page was originally founded for the workers that built Glen Canyon Dam. The town now has a population of over 6,000.

And yes, that green patch at the bottom is a lawn of green grass! They maintain it to prevent wind erosion.

The Glen Canyon hydroelectric power plant has eight 155,500-horsepower (116,000 kW) Francis turbines. Its total generating capacity is 1,296,000 kilowatts!

The bridge that spans the river near the dam is nearly as remarkable as the dam itself. That little white bump in the middle is a semi. :)

We are trying to make it to Cortez, Colorado tonight. To get there, we are taking highway 160 to four corners...the only place where the corners of four states meet: Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. We are driving through more fantastical country. The rocks look like cake batter now. I'm "on" baking for some reason with this terrain. I haven't been in a real kitchen for three days and I think I'm in withdrawal. :) Its starting to snow again. Goodnight.