On our way to Las Vegas, we took the route that takes you through the southern edge of Zion National Park. I was unprepared for exactly how beautiful this drive would be, and we will definitely be going back to Zion for a longer visit sometime in the future.
I actually found myself feeling fortunate that we hit the park on a rainy day. I don't think the clouds would have been as dramatically low as they were, otherwise, shrowding the mountain tops.
The park as seen from space in Google Earth. The red lines are hiking trails. Oh, the places I'll go!
What happened in Vegas isn't going to stay in Vegas, because I'm going to blog about it!
First of all, I hate playing catch-up, but the crappy Riviera Hotel wanted to charge an extra $10/night for Internet access and I refused on principal to pay for something that most "lesser" hotels give away for free. Besides, we were too busy to blog.
These two deer saw us off on the way out of town. We frequently see deer right outside our house. I managed to snap these with my camera phone.
We expected to take a lot of pictures on this trip, but I didn't expect to be taking them less than a block from our house!
We went west into Arizona, through the Navajo Nation, and hit some heavy snow just a couple hours into it as we climbed into higher elevations. The snow completely disappeared by the time we got to Glen Canyon.
Glen Canyon is gorgeous. (Or gorge-us, if you don't mind the pun.) The pic on the right is the Glen Canyon Dam, which creates Lake Powell north of it.
Strix taking pictures of the odd rock formations here at the edge of Glen Canyon. We noticed that the rock was very different in texture throughout Arizona and Utah than it is in New Mexico. It's less worn and more jagged. I'm no geologist, but I would guess that to mean that the formations are younger here.
There's a railing here to help you down the steep walkway to the lookout area.
I think it's amazing that these steps just naturally formed like this through geological forces! Isn't that proof enough of intelligent design?!
This little guy was our tour guide for a short time.
Just another shot of the interesting rock formations here.
The pictures don't do it justice, and it's also hard to see it when you haven't been living in a dry area for a while, but right after a rain what greenery we have looks extremely green, almost blue in their intensity.
Actual pics of the canyon, with the Colorado River flowing down at the bottom, making this an up-stream preview of the Grand Canyon. I didn't take these pictures from the viewing area. Much to Strix's consternation, I climbed a little higher and took them from a sheer dropoff with no railing. Great pics, though, don't you think? I think good photography is worth a little risk to life and limb.
Another thing pics don't do justice to - shots straight down a several hundred foot drop.
The Glen Canyon Dam. See the little white dot at the bottom right?
This is that little dot on 10x optical zoom. Looks like fun, doesn't it?
These people had to see the dam from a much lower vantage point, owing to their fear of falling to their water grave. Suckers. You'll notice the guy on the left decided to walk out past the railing, but he still didn't get a good a view as I did. Ha!
See, look at the fun I'm having.
A view from a little bit lower allowed me to get a shot further downstream, although with the cliffside in the way.
A pic of the dam from the "official" viewing point. How boring.
Strix contemplating the long walk back to the highway, up the stairs that were predestined for us to climb.
After getting back to the car (and panting for breath for a moment), we headed on to the bridge that crosses the gorge just downstream of the dam. This is a picture from the bridge of a geo marker that was placed here, on a little concrete platform, overlooking the dam. Why they decided to put it there, I do not know.
A view from the bridge down to the bottom of the dam. At first, I thought the green stuff was shallow river water, but on closer inspection it appears to be grass. Why? I don't know.
A view down the very long bridge crossing Glen Canyon.
Views of the canyon from the bridge.
A boat launch seen from the bridge. I'm definitely going to have to go back and do this.
A view of the dam from the bridge. The structure to the left is the visitor's center, which we went into briefly. This is the only time I've ever had to go through a metal detector to get into a visitor's center. Yes, I know it's a dam, but what difference does it make? If I can take out the Glen Canyon dam with my 3" pocket knife, I think we ought to just pack it up and go home.
A display of fossilized dinosaur tracks outside the visitor's center.
A view of the bridge from inside the visitor's center. It is 700 feet above the river and 1,028 feet long.
A view of the bottom of the dam from the visitor's center.
A view of the marina, upstream from the dam, as seen from the visitor's center.
A model of the lake and dam found inside the visitor's center.
A view of the power plant from farther beyond the bridge.
More views of Lake Powell.
Rain out west of our location, where we were going.
And now, some images from Google Earth, so you can see where we were:
Okay, this one is actually kind of funny. If you look at the dam from an angle in Google Earth, it looks like the bridge goes down into the river and comes back up. Doh.
The marina upstream from the dam.
The visitor's center, outline in read in the bottom left of the frame.
Okay, this concludes the first post from our trip. Watch for more!
I'm about to see Blue Man Group. Hell I Envy myself, so go ahead and eat your heart out.
I'm in Las Vegas this week, staying at the Riviera for the Navigator dispatch conference. The Riviera charges $10/night for Internet access, so I'm having to post from my Palm. My posts will be short until I get back, but I have lots of great pics to post when I get back.
I'll just say that I played a slot machine for the first time last night, and between Strix and I we won $138.
I'm in a year-long local leadership program called Leadership San Juan, and part the course culminates with having to complete a project with several other members, then give a presentation to the Leadership San Juan Board about what project you chose and how it was completed. The idea is to build collaborative skills and work as a team.
I am also on the Board of Directors for a non-profit called Sexual Assault Services of Northwest New Mexico. They provide rape counseling, legal advocacy, and forensic examinations for survivors of sexual assault. Being on their Board, I knew they had a number of needs as a new non-profit, one of which was a shower for survivors to use after their examination. So this is what my project group opted to do - build a shower in the existing bathroom of SAS.
Yesterday was the first day of actual work on the project, having been put off a couple of times due to conflicting schedules. Most everyone in LSJ is already a professional of some sort, so it's difficult to find a time we can all get together to work on something. The result is that only four of the seven showed up. It was duly noted that the four that showed up were the four men of the group, the three women having had conflicts suddenly appear in their calendars. I'm certain they will make up for their absence, but in the meantime they will have to hear about it for a while.
Ryan and Erik unloading the supplies.
The existing stall. There were two toilet stalls in the bathroom, one ADA compliant and one not, so the choice was obvious - rip out the non-ADA toilet and put in an ADA shower stall.
Gearing up for a hard day's work.
Oh, what a motley crew it is, too. From left to right: Ryan, Erik, me, Bryan. Ryan works for a construction (owns?) a construction company, and is also the director Echo Housing, so he is the de-facto foreman of our little group (thus the white hardhat). Erik runs a nursing home. Bryan owns a jewelry store. Notice the matching lime-green shirts. We're stylin'.
Too legit to quit.
The funnest part of any project - the demolition.
Plumbing is really just an excuse to crawl around on the floor and grunt.
The plans, after having been marked up in red by the city building inspector. It was practically bleeding red ink.
Everything has a use.
To put in the very wide ADA shower (63.5" across), we had to take out not only one of the toilet stalls, but also one of the two sinks. Left is a shot of the sink area after I happily demolished one of the mirrors. I wonder if I get seven years bad luck for each whack? Right is a self portrait in part of a demolished mirror.
This is pretty much what it looked like by the end of the day. Sometime during the week, a licensed plumber will come and (for free!) run lines from the existing piping and put in the fixtures. Then next weekend we get to finish the walls with FRP and put the remaining sink back in. If we can get it all done next weekend, Sexual Assault Services will have a shower, and we will just have to edit the video for the presentation! We're going for an "Extreme Home Makeover" theme, so it should be fun.
119 E Main St
Farmington, NM
Me and the rest of my construction posse ate at TJ'd Diner for breakfast, yesterday. I was expecting typical greasy diner fair, but the food was actually very good, the service was prompt, the prices were low, and the table was clean. It was a good experience. I had the machito (a big breakfast burrito).
I've always been interested in Artificial Intelligence programs, though most do not even come close to mimmicking the range of human responses in conversation. I've seen other voxers recently post links to one called iGod and one called Tufty the Traffic Safety Squirrel (don't ask me how they came up with that one), but I've played with them a little and found them to be profoundly stupid.
Then I found Mitsuku. Mitsuku is the most intelligent AI program I've every seen. She can actually hold conversations, play games, and make interesting connections. Some of her responses are fairly creepy. Ask her what her favorite movie is, then ask her why. Also ask her about religion. You may have trouble sleeping tonight.
Tonight I attended a DWI Town Hall meeting. It happens that the county I live in has a bad problem with DWI, and there are reasons for that, not all of which I will get into in my public post.
There was good community turnout, good questions, and good responses from the panel, which included the governor's DWI czar, a representative from the Motor Vehicle Department, the Sheriff, the county DWI Coordinator, and others. Overall, I think the meeting demonstrated the key to reducing DWI in our community, which is community involvement.
One of the issues that came up was the use of special DWI hotlines. In New Mexico, the state government has pushed the use of a hotline (1-877-HALT-DWI), which recently has been augmented with the inclusion of access to the line by pressing #DWI from your cell phone. It sounds great, until you stop and realize that there already is a statewide number - indeed, a nationwide number - for reporting drunk drivers. That number is 9-1-1. New Mexico has been heavily advertising the use of a hotline which connects callers - no matter where they are in the state - with a central call center in Albuquerque, which then takes the information or transfers the call back to the local dispatch center. Calling 9-1-1 will get you directly to that dispatch center, so what is the point of adding another layer of communication between the citizen reporting the drunk driver and the law enforcement officer on the street?
Make no mistake. Drunk drivers are an emergency. They kill 17,000 people, on average, in the United States every year. If you see a drunk driver, call 9-1-1. Accept no substitute.
As most I'm sure have already heard, thirty-two people were gunned down to day at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA, making for the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Everyones thoughts are - and should be - with the victims and their families. Over the next few months, much more will come out about the shooter and his motivations, as it did in the Columbine shooting.
Working in the industry I do, I also know that much will come out about how the incident was handled by the public safety dispatchers in Blacksburg. What do you do when you work in a 9-1-1 call center and you suddenly start handling an incident such as this one, fielding hundreds of calls from panicked parents and you don't have any information to give them, when students at the school call and ask you how to get to safety, and you don't know what to tell them? Yes, my heart goes out to the victims and families. Being a dispatcher, my heart goes out to the dispatchers, too. Nothing is worse than the feeling of helplessness as others are dying.
| You scored as Zombie Killer. |
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Congratulations, you survived! Not only that, but have whooped some serious zombie ass. Your heroics inspired others to fight back as well, giving humanity a fighting chance. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Thanks, Aput, for showing me this one. This has to be the funnest online quiz I've ever taken, and apparently I did pretty well. This reminds me of a little roll-playing game I played in a college class once, where we were stranded in the Arctic, and we could only take a certain number of items with us from the downed plane, and we had to pick which items would be most useful. I scored the highest in the class, based on what the expert survivalists said you would need if the situation was the real deal. I guess I'm a good guy to know, after all. |
