Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon

The artificiality of the Strip aside, the Las Vegas area actually has lots of natural attractions worth seeking out. Red Rock Canyon is a short drive away, and you can get to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam in less than an hour. With 4-5 hours of driving, you will reach the Grand Canyon in AZ, and if you drive west instead, you will hit Death Valley in CA. With a bit of internet scouting, I found a $79 bus tour that would take you to see Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon in an all-day excursion. So, one morning at 5 am, we all bundled up and hopped onto a tour bus to escape the city.

Hoover Dam was constructed at the height of the Great Depression, and completed in 1936, under budget and 2 years ahead of schedule, an amazing feat for a public works project. Lake Mead is the reservoir created by the dam. At completion, Hoover Dam was the world's largest hydroelectric power generating facility and the world's largest concrete structure. Currently, it is ranked 38th in hydroelectric power generation.

If you are ever depressed about the state of American science, hearing about the ingenuity of Hoover Dam construction will cheer you up. Two cofferdams were constructed to create a dry riverbed for construction. To divert the flow of the Colorado River, four diversion tunnels were blasted into the walls of Black Canyon, with a combined length of over 3 miles. To smooth the sides of the canyon, high-scalers were suspended from the canyon walls with ropes. They strategically placed dynamite in crevices, then swung away just in time to avoid the blast. There were 112 deaths recorded during dam construction, but contrary to rumors, no bodies were buried inside the dam. However, there is a dog buried inside, a mascot adopted by the construction workers.

When the Bureau of Reclamation solicited bids for dam construction, there was no single company with the capabilities to construct a dam of this size. So, six construction firms on the West coast banded together to bid for the contract. Appropriately, they called themselves "Six Companies." This being the height of the Depression, stable jobs were scarce and Six Companies was able cut corners on worker safety and pay. When striking workers demanded greater access to water and better working conditions, they were fired and replaced.

Two years after construction began, engineers were ready to pour concrete for the dam. Since concrete contracts and generates heat as it hardens, the dam was built in interlocking trapezoidal pours to prevent cracking. If the dam had been done in one single pour, it is estimated that it would have taken 125 years to cool and harden.

As you drive over the top of the dam, you cross the border from Nevada to Arizona, or vice versa. Since AZ doesn't observe DST but is in the Mountain time zone, there are two clocks on either side that show the correct time.

The dam is curved like an eggshell to better distribute water pressure. Two spillways protect the dam from being overtopped by water. These have been used only 3 times in the history of the dam. Lake Mead contains over two years worth of water from the Colorado River. You cannot overemphasize the impact that Hoover Dam had in reshaping the development of the West. Looking at the dam, I felt a mixture of awe, pride and terror at mankind's ability to reshape his environment.

The kids

The old people

Afterwards, we continued west through Arizona to the Grand Canyon. This is the first time I've been in a desert climate, and the mountains are drastically different from the verdant Appalachians that I am accustomed to seeing. I fell sleep for a couple hours, and when I woke up, the landscape had morphed from arid desert dirt to picturesque snow-capped mountains and pine trees. Looks like I came all the way from Chicago to be surrounded by more snow and wind.

We stopped at a visitor's center for lunch, and watched a half-hour National Geographic IMAX film titled "Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets." Unsure of whether or not to see the movie, the tour coordinator told us, "It will be the best $12 you've ever spent. I used to tell people that if they saw it and thought it wasn't worth the $12 bucks, they could call me and I would refund their money...then a group of 58 people called and wanted their money back." With such a rousing recommendation, we all decided to see the movie, and it was totally worth every penny, definitely the best IMAX film I've ever seen. I would go so far as to say it was better than seeing the actual canyon, because the footage of the inner canyon walls and whitewater rapids is something we wouldn't be able to see. You also learn about the history of exploration in the canyon, and how the canyon is still relatively untouched by modernity, an untamed pièce de résistance by Nature. If you visit the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, definitely make a point to stop and see this movie.

We have arrived! You can't see the ground, but it was treacherously icy near the edge, and my mom was freaking out about one of us slipping and falling underneath the railing.

Mather's point, the widest part of the Grand Canyon

This area is where ~90% of photos of the Grand Canyon are taken

Group shot in front of a stagecoach with everyone except Uncle Thuan

Stanley and Marilyn sword fighting with hiking sticks in a gift shop, luckily we didn't get kicked out.

Stanley pretending to be a unicorn. Icicles were an immense source of fascination for the Cali kids.

Sunset over the Grand Canyon, framed by picture-perfect snow-covered pine trees

Tsukiji Fish Market

Tsukiji Fish Market is the world's most famous seafood wholesale venue. About ¥2 billion worth of seafood is sold here daily. If it lives in the sea, chances are it is sold here. From Tsukiji, wholesalers distribute goods to restaurants in Japan and the rest of the world. At one point in your life, your sushi probably passed through this market on the way to your plate.

The market itself is a series of concentric horseshoe shaped stalls and warehouses, and the atmosphere is chaotic, to say the least. You need to be hyper-aware of your surroundings, since people are constantly trying to move around you, lifting heavy boxes nearby, and the fishmongers drive surprisingly agile motorized carts, which whip around corners unexpectedly. If you aren't careful, you will get in the way/get hit. The market is also rather wet, so you should not wear your best dress shoes.

The market's most notorious event is the morning tuna auction, which takes place from 5-6:30 am each day. For a while, visitors were banned from viewing the auction due to its popularity; the crowd of rubberneckers was becoming too much of a distraction for people trying to conduct business. Now, it is possible to watch the tuna auctions from a cordoned off area, and you can take photos without flash.

I woke up a little later than I wanted, and made it to a train station at 5:15, not accounting that the trains would be running less frequently in the morning. It was 6 am by the time I arrived at the Hibiya Tsukiji stop, and I started running down the street towards the market. After a frantic search, I found the tuna auction in the back of the horseshoe, with a door marked "Vistors Entrance." It was 6:10 am, and they stop admitting people at 6:15. Phew!

Inside, you could see hulking frozen tuna lying on the floor, with pieces sliced from the ends so that buyers could inspect the quality of the meat inside. On another table, you could inspect tuna steaks, touch them, and warm them a little with your hand, before putting in bids.

A bell clanged and the auctioneer moved toward a tuna. These bluefin tuna weigh several hundred pounds and can fetch up to $20 million apiece. I couldn't follow what the auctioneer was actually saying, though he held up fingers to indicate the current asking price. After the tuna are sold, they are packaged and shipped off around the world again. There is also a fresh tuna room, with tuna that are caught in the previous few days. The frozen ones could have been caught anywhere in the Atlantic or the Pacific, before being frozen and flown here for sale.

Outside of the tuna auctions, you could buy every seafood product imaginable, dead or alive. There were buckets of writhing eels, beautiful iridescent shrimp, freshly gutted fish, piles of oysters and even a few turtles. (This is where you can get upset about the devastation of the ocean's seafood stocks and Japan's lack of environmental policing.) Men sliced apart hunks of tuna with hacksaws. Forklifts and trolleys sped through the warehouse.

Traditionally, a visit to Tsukiji is followed by a trip to a nearby sushi restaurant. Just north of the inner market is a series of stalls with slightly less chaotic shops and restaurants. Tipped off by Lonely Planet, I headed to Daiwa Sushi (building #6), where a mass of people was crowded in front. Disorganized though it appeared, the crowd was actually an orderly mass of people, snaking towards the front. I was directed to the end by an employee, who urged us to stay clear of the central path so that the carts could get by. It was 7 am.

After about 45 minutes of waiting, I was starving and had only moved 50% of the way to the door. Suddenly, the hostess leaned out of the door and shouted something, holding up one finger. The crowd jostled and looked around. Wait, one person? I said. Me, me! I leapfrogged in front of at least 15 people to be seated.

Daiwa Sushi is actually two adjacent shops, one run by the father and the other by the son. I happened to be in the one run by the elder chef, who was quite friendly as he showed me a picture menu with English translations. The easiest thing to do though is to order the set sushi meal (¥3500). Everyone else around me seemed to be doing the same. This comes with 7 pieces of nigiri, 1 set of maki rolls, and a bowl of miso soup. As the pieces were made, the chef would set them down in front of you on your plate. I ended up with a piece of squid, shrimp, maguro, sea urchin, tamago omelet, horse mackerel, eel, and tuna and roe maki.

Not surprisingly, everything was top-notch and extremely fresh. I even got a piece of the shrimp head with the shrimp nigiri. Earlier, someone had mentioned that they didn't like the sea urchin, and I have to say that this was the most challenging piece. The texture of sea urchin is too soft and squishy for most American palates, but I actually enjoyed it once I got over the unexpected texture.

I don't think I can ever eat another Philadelphia roll.

Please Pass (on) the Tuna

By now, most people have read or heard about Fast Food Nation, an indictment of the modern factory farm, where cheap meat is produced at an all-too-high, hidden environmental cost. The recent emergence of swine flu has once again put the spotlight on factory farming and how the industry encourages the proliferation of disease. With that in mind, I began investigating the complementary industries of fishing and aquaculture. Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood provides an eye-opening, informative guide to the state of the world's seafood supply, and is a must-read for anyone who eats seafood, if only for reasons of self-protection.

The oceans have long been credited with inexhaustible supplies of seafood, but a combination of industrial-age fishing techniques and a burgeoning human population has wiped out many fish stocks to levels of commercial extinction. Bottom-trawling, or dragging a net across the seafloor, essentially destroys and levels hundreds of square miles of seabed each day. Dynamite and cyanide are commonly used to stun reef fish (grouper, Napoleon wrasse); it is estimated that a square meter of coral reef is killed for every reef fish caught. Meanwhile, people have been consuming more and more seafood, from the newly affluent Chinese to the explosion of all-you-can-eat shrimp and crab specials at American chains like Red Lobster.

Grescoe introduces the concept of trophic numbers, a way to classify levels of the food chain, ranging from 1 for plankton and plants to 5 for large predators like lions or humans. Generally, eating closer to the bottom of the trophic scale is better for the environment. In a whirlwind tour around the world, Grescoe follows the supply chains of the globe's most popular seafood dishes. The bad news is, once you know the story behind that plate of pan-roasted monkfish, you will feel compelled to never eat it again. The good news is, there are plenty of alternative seafood choices which are both better for the environment and better for your health. Some of the species highlighted follow below.

Bluefin Tuna (trophic level 4.4)
Though the word "tuna" tends to evoke cans emblazoned with "chicken of the sea," the bluefin tuna could not be further from that image. A ferocious torpedo-shaped hunting machine, the bluefin can grow up to 15' in length and sprint at 50 mph. Unfortunately, the bluefin tuna is now the ocean's ultimate cash cow. Once plentiful, Atlantic bluefin stocks have declined by 90% over the past four decades to feed the demand for bluefin sushi. And despite efforts by conservationists to limit the number of bluefin caught, you can still pick up a bluefin nigiri breakfast (including the prized toro) for a mere $15 in Tokyo. Meanwhile, the long-lived tuna species (yellowfin, albacore and bluefin) tend to be dangerously high in mercury. Tuna is also commonly caught using longlining, which snags sharks, swordfish, seabirds and turtles as bycatch.

With that knowledge, I would rather cross tuna off my list of things to consume. Another option: non-longline-caught skipjack tuna (marketed as "light tuna") is low in mercury and relatively plentiful in oceans.

Shrimp (2.6)
Shrimp farming takes place in some of the world's poorest countries, and the industry has left indelible destruction on the scale of the 2004 Asian Tsunami. Like large poultry and swine operations, shrimp ponds are treated with heavy-duty chemicals including antibiotics (to prevent disease) and piscicides (to kill any competing aquatic life). The resultant pollution causes disease in natives, destroys groundwater and wipes out the livelihoods of neighboring farmers and small-scale fishermen. The effects extend to distant consumers as well; some people who believe they have allergies to shellfish are in fact reacting to antibiotic residues in farmed seafood. Wild shrimp, on the other hand, are usually caught with bottom-trawlers. For every pound of shrimp caught, another ten pounds of unwanted, dead fish are thrown overboard.

What, then, is the conscientious shrimp-lover to do? Examine your purchases very, very carefully. If the shrimp on display glisten unnaturally or taste soapy after cooking, they have probably been treated with sodium tripolyphosphate, a suspected neurotoxicant. Wild-caught shrimp are undoubtedly better for your health, but exert a huge environmental cost. That leaves only a few stocks of northern shrimp, pink shrimp and spot prawns in Canadian and northern US waters which are considered sustainable choices.

Other Good Alternatives:
Oysters and mussels (2.0) are farmed without chemicals and help clean the oceans. Small schooling fish like herring (3.2) and sardines (2.6) are low in toxins and relatively abundant. Jellyfish (2.0) have proliferated in recent years due to climate change and overfishing of top-level predators. Trout (4.4), arctic char (4.3) and barramundi (4.4) are farmed in non-polluting, contained inland systems. Farmed tilapia (2.0) and catfish (3.8) are herbivores, so they do not diminish the net supply of protein, and buying domestic products reduces the risk of antiotic residues.

When buying seafood, you should be able to make an informed choice with 3 questions. Was the fish farmed or wild-caught? If wild, what ocean did it come from and what port did it land in? How was it caught (trawl net, hook and line)? If farmed, was it farmed domestically or overseas? If overseas, in which country? Shedd Aquarium provides a handy, wallet-size card that lists recommendations for purchasing seafood. I've printed one out to carry as a reference guide. But in the end, all the knowledge in the world won't help you if your grocer, fishmonger or server does not know the source of their products. If you find someone knowledgeable and willing to answer your questions (Dirk's and the Fishguy come to mind), support their business with your purchases.