Roadside Mysteries

College of DuPage has a van?

One of the NexLab vans
Actually there were two vans on the road going out to the Dakotas to try and find some severe weather. You can track them online HERE to see where they are.

Look who’s kicking America’s ass:

Another group on a mission
They are on a mission to make 50 movies in 50 states in 50 days. Check HERE for details.

Hey, I found a few trucks:

Fire fighters from Lakewood, Co, The Colorado National Guard, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Great Northern Fire, Eagle CO. F.D., Sunfire from Keystone, SD., Basalt Fire & Rescue, Syracuse UT FD, BLM Fire, Rapid City SD FD, Edgemont SD FD, Kansas Fire Service, and last but not least, the Left Hand Fire & Rescue. To you and all the others I didn’t see today, THANKS FOR BEING HERE!

Celebrating it’s 75th year:

Now located in Berthoud, Colorado

I think I’ve mentioned before that water is an important topic in Northern Colorado. And if you need to learn as much as you can about what’s going on with our water (us being Northern Coloradoans) you can get on the waiting list to attend a NCWCD tour. Once you are on the guest list, you can get on over to Berthoud, Co. (Remember Berthoud?) and get on the bus to either the east or west slope tours.

Windy Gap blow holes

The pumping station at Windy Gap pushes tons of water up-hill in an eastern direction towardLake Granby with the intention to control the water level of the lake: It is not to change by more than 12 inches! If something happens to the pumps that would make them stop, tons of water flow back to the station and shoot out of the blow holes.

Not an ICBM bunker

It’s a tunnel that goes under Rocky Mountain National Park

The Alva B. Adams Tunnel, specifically

One of many tunnels in the “System”, the system being the Colorado-Big Thompson Water Project (aka, the C-BT) , but this one is the largest water tunnel, 13.1 miles long, 9.75 feet in diameter, drops 109 feet end to end (How did they do that?) it takes the water from Grand Lake on the east on the mountains and delivers it at 5 miles per hour to Mary’s Lake on the east side of the mountains.

Pumping station talk

Among other talks on the tour– Oh, about the tour: This was the West Slope Tour: it was free, and it included a continental breakfast and lunch and a bus ride through Rocky Mountain National Park and back; Total time on tour: 10 hours!

Windy Gap Reservoir bird island

This was a very environmentally friendly area and it was great for viewing the local wildlife. Of course there are many more reservoirs in the chain of the C-BT, let’s see: Our water comes from Green Mountain to Windy Gap to Lake Granby to Shadow Mountain to Grand Lake to Mary’s Lake to Lake Estes to Pinewood to Flatiron and finally Horsetooth.

Eric tells us how

Eric is one of the plant engineers at the C-BT and he gave us even more information about Colorado water than the engineer on the 2 hour bus ride up to Windy Gap. Really it’s information overload unless you are a water engineer or something like that.

Remember “Payton’s Hill” in Arlington Heights, Illinois?

This is the view from “Bingham Hill Park” looking westward

I was biking up Bingham Hill a few weeks ago in preparation for the preparation of that big bike ride across Iowa, whatever it’s called… Rag– something or other. In this picture there is a farm house  and above it in the background are the foothills of the Roosevelt National Forest.

The same view today

The smoke from the High Park Fire has taken away the foothills for the moment. Uncertain winds will change this scene more than a dozen times in a day and there are hopes that the fire does not spread eastward. Since last reported on June 9th, the size of this fire has increased an order of magnitude.  The type I fire crews have control of 10% of the fire as of today. Note: Type I fire crews function as the “initial attack” on a forest fire while the type II crews carry out suppression efforts and mop-up activity.

Bingham Hill area residents on the hill

I watched as several people over an hour’s time walk up to the top and look over the valley in the direction of the fire. The home-owners are a bit edgy as they know that conditions could change rapidly and the fire could spread into the valley. Less than a mile west of the  hill is the road leading to Lory State Park; the road is blocked by Colorado National Guard vehicles and so is Rist Canyon Road near the town of Bellvue.

We will be glad to hear on the news when the Type II fire crews are in place. Soon I hope…

The view west from our deck:

Near Rist Canyon

At the time this picture was taken at noon today, it was a 200 acre fire. By 7:30 p.m. it increased to 5000 acres. It looked like the Horsetooth Reservoir was on fire this morning but in reality the High Park area is about 25 miles from here.  What a start to the Summer, two days ago it was the Camman fire, then Stuart Hole fire,  and  last month the Hewlett fire.