Day 41, September 25, Hurricane, Utah to Page, Arizona

At 9:45, we were packed up and on the road, climbing out of the valley which houses Hurricane. The skies are clear with a temperature of 23C.
Half an hour later, we entered Arizona and had yet another time change. Arizona does not observe daylight savings time and is one hour earlier than Utah in Spring & Summer.
Passed by Colorado City, a town of many large homes where polygamy is practiced. What do these men do for a living in order to support multiple wives and all their children???

Turned off Hwy 389 at Pipe Spring National Monument, which is an oasis in a seemingly uninhabitable region of high desert. The spring was a source of survival where the Mormons built a fort to protect them from indian attacks. They also ran a very sucessful ranch there. We had a Ranger-led tour of the fort, named Windsor Castle and the grounds.






The highway curved back north into Utah, through Kanab. At Big Water we saw our first sign of water! Shortly afterward we re-entered Arizona. There was a beautiful view to the left, but no where to stop for a photo! Arrived at Page-Lake Powell Campground & got set up.

Off to the Carl Hayden Visitor Centre at the Glen Canyon Dam.

The dam was constructed between 1956 & 1966 in a virtually inaccessible area on the Colorado River, 8 miles below the Utah-Arizona border. It is the second-tallest concrete arch dam in the U.S. (Hoover Dam is 17 feet higher). The crest of the dam spans 1,560 ft and rises 710 feet above the bedrock.

At 700 feet above the Colorado River, the Glen Canyon Bridge is the second-highest steel-arch bridge in the world and was opened in February, 1959. Prior to the construction of the bridge, the road distance from one side of the river to the other was 197 miles!

Lake Powell was created when the dam was built. It is 186 miles long and backs up into more than 96 major side canyons. Its 1960 miles of shoreline are longer than the length of the whole western coast of the continental US. It is the second-largest man-made lake in the US, after Lake Mead.