Holding Back Colorado at Nevada and Arizona

Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, and the Colorado River, Nevada and Arizona, USA

Hoover Dam is an incredible structure which holds back the Colorado River to form Lake Mead and provide hydroelectric power and water to millions of citizens in the Southwestern United States.

In this photo you can clearly see the dam, penstock towers, a spillway, Lake Mead, the Colorado River, and the bypass bridge.

This photo was taken near the end of the same flight from which we snapped yesterday's photo of Emory University and the CDC.  Like yesterday's photo, the plane was turning, but instead of climbing, it was descending.  This required being prepared and taking many shots in rapid succession.

We were lucky that there was no cloud cover and that our flight path flew past Hoover Dam where we could see it from our side of the plane.

Lookout Below

Tennessee River, Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

Back in the 1990's, we took a trip to Chattanooga during a cold December.  We took this picture from a rock ledge in Point Park atop Lookout Mountain.  We remember the beautiful scenery, but also the bitter cold of that day.

A Wild Virgin

Virgin River, Zion National Park, Utah, USA

The Virgin River runs wild for just a few weeks of the year.  Most of the time, it is but as trickle.  This photo was taken during a very busy time for the river, which shaped much of the surrounding scenery.

Looking for the Great Bend

Great Bend of the San Juan River, Utah, USA
When we fly, we like to look out the window. Sometimes we know generally where we are and what we've photographed thanks to a map display on the aircraft. Sometimes, with or without the roaming map, we need to conduct research to determine what is in an aerial photograph.

If we're not sure what we're looking at, we use a variety of methods to determine what is in the picture. We often plot a great circle route map (as a starting point), examine prior and succeeding photographs, calculate time from take off, and try to find the landscape on Google Maps. We also often use Google's Picasa desktop tool to heighten colors and details.

Ultimately, Google Maps is the key, as it shows actual landscapes, but even this can take time as many landscapes can look nearly identical. Once we find the location for our picture, we then need to see if there is an associated name.

In the case of this photo, we used all of the methods described above. There were many similar bends in the landscape, so we had to further refine the criteria and look at the landscape from a variety of angles in Google Maps.