I was awefully tired after yesterday.  We were on a seriously small skeleton crew at work, so I was quite busy all day there.  After that, I figured I’d go check out the severe thunderstorm and flash flooding I’d seen in the weather reports  Of course, the fact that it was all down by Hoover Dam was just icing on the cake.  Like I need an excuse to go to a tourist trap

RAIN!!!  Water falling from the sky!

I had to take this picture and I think it turned out pretty good.  You can even see quite a bit of runoff on the shoulder of the road.  What you can’t see is just how much water there was on the freeway at one point – I needed both hands to drive through that

Humidity anyone?  We sure had some!  Maybe not by Kath’s standards, but we’re used to single digit or slightly higher humidity and it was probably up over 30%.  The visual advantage of this humidity is that it made the sunbeams stand out

Rain out in the desert looks different than just about anywhere else I’ve seen it.  I can’t figure out why this is, but I like it

I don’t get to see many of these here, so I’ll take any chance I get to take pictures of them when I can.

I really like how the sun and darker shadows lay on the ground towards the evening.

To get to Nevada from Arizona you have two choices.  You can drive through Laughlin and add an hour to your trip or you can go the more direct route over Hoover Dam and take about an hour and a half more than if you’d gone through Laughlin.  The road across the dam is only one lane each way which is bad enough without the security checkpoints.  All big trucks have to go via Laughlin.

To remedy this situation, the government is building a bypass.  This should speed things up considerably, especially for the truckers.

This cableway is still used from time to time.  I just love the 1930s look it has to it

Below Hoover Dam, the Colorado River winds its way through Boulder Canyon as it has done for millenia.  It’s just a lot weaker now.

It looks like they’re just about done with the arch for the bypass bridge

I love it when I can get deep blue sky and dark clouds together, but the construction adds to the composition as well

Just another picture of the sun on the distant mountains.  I reall don’t ever get tired of this stuff!

I don’t know what they were thinking of when they built the new visitors’ center, but I guess it’s OK.  The views are nice from inside

As you may have guessed, this was another picture taken by sticking my hand out of the driver’s window on the HHR  I think this view of Las Vegas and The Strip in the distance just ROCKS!

I took this when I was just about home last night.  Those clouds you see are the ones I was under over by Hoover Dam.  BIG storm!

I was halfway tempted to head up to the northwest to see about getting into two thunderstorms in one afternoon, but I was tired and the batteries in the camera were running low for the first time in quite a few days.  Still, I did manage to capture the light of the sunset on the thunderhead

Last, but most certainly not least is a panorama I stitched together.  This was taken at an overlook not too far away from Hoover Dam.  I would have enjoyed my time there a bit more if I hadn’t had to put up with some obnoxious tourists, but c’est la vie right?

I did get to see several close bolts of lightning with the accompanying rolling thunder that echoed off the mountans.  In case you haven’t noticed, I really like thunderstorms, lightning, and thunder.  I’ll take the rain if it’s there, but I’m perfectly happy with lightning and thunder

So there’s yesterday’s post in place and up on the net.  I’ll try to have today’s post up before it gets too late