A great place to view the Colorado River in Glen Canyon is Horseshoe Bend. Because of shadows, it is best seen around the middle of the day. We went out there a little after 10 AM, and it was already oppressively hot and humid with thunderstorms in the distance. Despite our discomfort with the short (1.5 mile round trip) hike, it was well worth it. 
From here we could admire the magnificence of Glen Canyon and wonder what the rest of it was like before it was filled with water. I remember reading things by or about Edward Abbey and David Brower and wondered how it was that even the Sierra Club made only a halfhearted attempt to save Glen Canyon. I guess it was its isolation which was its undoing; because so few people had been there, their voices were easily ignored. I wonder, will we let the same thing happen again with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?Normally I'm very happy with my camera equipment, but this was one occasion where I was frustrated by my insufficiently wide angle lens. 28 mm was just not enough.
My daughter and husband really struggled with the heat (103 F/39 C), so we chose to cool off by visiting the Glen Canyon Dam. They had a very interesting and informative tour of the dam which had the added benefit of being naturally cool.
The tour included a lot about how the dam was built and the engineering marvel that it is, and I was able to appreciate it on that level. In 1956 when they started building the dam, it was the most remote location in the country with no roads and no way to cross the Colorado River anywhere in the vicinity. The town of Page came into existence as a place for the workers to live.
During construction of the dam, a layer of sandstone was unearthed which contained dinosaur tracks. A piece of this was displayed in front of the visitor center.
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