Two Mile Tunnel

 

Once our lunches and camera bags had been searched (it turned out that my turkey sandwich was not a security risk), we boarded the bus that would carry us to the base of the Glen Canyon dam.  In darkness, we rode through the two mile long access tunnel that had been bored through rock and reinforced with concrete.  Every so often, a ventilation hole would spill in light from the river side illuminating streaming water that dripped a little too freely (in my opinion) through the tunnel’s porous rock.  Those glimpses of shimmering moisture sparked a sincere gratitude in me that text messaging and MP3 players were not yet around to distract the engineers and excavators who completed the excavation back in the late 1950s.

Because somehow… two miles in darkness extends just a little longer than two miles in daylight.

Page Hotel Review

  • Google Reader
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Delicious
  • LinkedIn
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Bookmarks
  • Windows Live Favorites
  • Windows Live Spaces
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Yahoo Messenger
  • AIM
  • AOL Mail
  • Blinklist
  • FriendFeed
  • Ask.com MyStuff
  • Share/Bookmark

Ornithopod was Here

 

With the 710 foot Glen Canyon dam rising above us to the right, tightly tucked between red sandstone walls that shunted the Colorado River southwest to the Grand Canyon, it would have been easy to overlook a single slab of rock beside the metal dock-way to our raft.  But a student from Northern Arizona University waved me over and quietly pointed out the imprinted stone.  “They don’t want people to know it’s there,” he whispered.  It being the fossiled footprint of a three-toed dinosaur.

The 2009 discovery of another ornithopod-like fossil track way in the canyon may date the bird-footed herbivores to 25 million years earlier than previously recorded.

The Navajo sandstone of Glen Canyon is etched with histories of ancient people and creatures: primitive petroglyphs and prehistoric fossil prints,  hidden and revealed over time as the water levels rise and fall.

Page Things To Do

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
  • Google Reader
  • Facebook
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Technorati Favorites
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Delicious
  • LinkedIn
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Bookmarks
  • Windows Live Favorites
  • Windows Live Spaces
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Yahoo Messenger
  • AIM
  • AOL Mail
  • Blinklist
  • FriendFeed
  • Ask.com MyStuff
  • Share/Bookmark