Panoramas

One of the places we visited on our recent vacation was Parker Dam on the Colorado River between California and Arizona. I dug up some facts about the dam from Wikipedia:

Parker Dam is a concrete gravity-arch dam which spans the Colorado river, at a point 155 miles (250 km) downstream of Hoover Dam. It is 320 feet (98 meters) high, 235 feet (72 meters) of which are below the riverbed, making it the deepest, although not the highest, dam in the world. The dam’s primary functions are to act as a reservoir, and to generate hydroelectric power. The dam straddles the border between California and Arizona. The reservoir behind the dam is called Lake Havasu and can store 647,000 acre-feet (798,000,000 m³) or over 210 billion US gallons of water.

Image above right: Verna looks for photo ops below the dam. Click on the image for a panoramic image downstream from the dam.

The power plant has four Francis turbines with a combined capacity of 120 MW. Each turbine weighs 60,000 pounds. The head is 72 feet (22 meters). Half of the electricity the plant produces is used by the Metropolitan Water District to pump water along the Colorado River Aqueduct, and the rest is sold to utilities in California, Arizona and Nevada. The generation of power is limited by a requirement to keep the water level of Lake Havasu between 440 to 450 feet (134 to 137 meters) for recreational purposes.

Image above left: Upstream side of the dam. Click on the image for a panoramic image upstream and a view of Lake Havasu.

Lake Havasu is the water source for the Colorado River Aqueduct. The aqueduct is operated by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water to almost all cities in the greater Los Angeles and San Diego areas. The district paid for nearly the entire cost of the dam, but it is owned and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Lake Havasu is also the water source for the Central Arizona Project Aqueduct (“CAP”). The project is designed to provide water for irrigated agricultural areas, as well as municipal water for several Arizona communities, including the metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson.

When we arrived in Sedona last week, we stayed at a great hotel called the Matterhorn Inn. The room we had was on the level just above the shops along the main drag through town. There was a deck in front of our room where we could walk out and look at the activities on the street as well as see spectacular views of the red rocks. Click on the image below to bring up a giant panoramic image of Sedona.

When we were at the Canyon, there were several cloudbursts in progress. Lightning struck so close at one point that our SUV shook from the concussion. There was no problem a while later when it cleared enough to get this incredible panoramic view from Desert Lookout. Click it big.

In 1930, Fred Harvey commissioned Mary Colter to design and build a gift shop and rest area at the Grand Canyon’s Desert View scenic overlook. The Watchtower resulted from Colter’s efforts and was opened to the public in 1933.

The Desert View lookout and the Watchtower make for a climactic final stop if you are driving Desert View Drive from Grand Canyon Village, or a dramatic beginning if you enter the park through the East Entrance. From the top of the 70-foot stone-and-mortar Watchtower even the muted hues of the distant Painted Desert to the east and the 3,000-foot-high Vermilion Cliffs rising from a high plateau near the Utah border are visible. In the chasm below, angling to the north toward Marble Canyon, you can see an imposing stretch of the Colorado River. The Watchtower houses a glass-enclosed observatory with powerful telescopes.

I made this image of the tower using a vertical panoramic technique; first, I took three images of the tower in portrait mode, one above the other with slight overlap. I was standing about 30 feet (9 meters) away from the tower. The camera was my little Canon A710 IS and the photo stitch software was part of Canon’s Zoom Browser which came with the camera. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger view of this interesting, looming tower.