Terminus: A and R Lines

On this trip, I checked out two terminuses, Denver Airport and Peoria. Peoria wasn't that difficult. It's where their rail lines, A and R, meet. A is a commuter rail running from Union Station to the Denver International Airport and the R line is a light rail that connects the A line in Peoria and Ridgegate south of Denver. The R line also parallels the H line from Bellevue Station to Florida station.

That's Peoria Station. It's in the middle of an industrial area. Access is by streets. I didn't see any trails, so I didn't spend any more time there than a wait for the R line on my return trip. 

I walked up to Arapahoe Station and took the E line to Union Station and drank a cold brew coffee at the Pigtrain Coffee Company. I normally don't drink black coffee. It usually just tastes bitter to me, but this concoction was Coffee amplified. It was delicious.

The primary attractions on the A line commuter rail are the big, comfortable trains, the University of Colorado Denver campus, and the airport. It leaves the hills of the South Platte Valley and travels across the high plains proper. I can see a trip back this way in the future for wildlife watching. The plains also afford some spectacular views of the Rockies from a distance 

[The High Plains]

[The epitome of "snowcapped mountain majesty"]

This photograph also shows a windbreak, or snow fence along a road. The plains can have some ferocious windstorms and blizzards. On a trip to Cincinnati a few years back, Coyote, and I encountered a blizzard on the way back. We were in Kansas not far from the Colorado border and would have liked to drive on home, but this thing was blowing tractor-trailers off the icy roads, so we decided to stop overnight. That also explained the gates that could be drawn across the Interstate highway to shut it down!

I usually do a "weird Denver" hike in October but this year's move to Centennial forced me to delay it until November. Although it's easy enough to find "weird" in Denver, I had the A line terminus on my list and the airport has more than its share of weird, so it was a natural choice.

Take, for instance, the sentinel statue, Big Blue Mustang" also known affectionately as "Blucifer". I was hoping to get a close-up of this bizarre piece of art with its fiery eyes and grotesquely veiny surface (is that hardening of the arteries?) but it is surrounded by traffic and not at all easy to get to. Luckily, there is no lack of photos of this famous nightmare (uh, night-stallion) on the Internet (just search for "Blucifer") and DIT has fully owned the horse.

[Blucifer poster]

The statue earned it's widespread notoriety by killing it's creator, artist Luis Jiminez, when a segment of the unfinished statue fell on his leg, severing an artery. It is rather unfortunate that this prolific and respected artist's life and works is so overshadowed by the circumstances of his death. You may want to check out his other works on the Internet.

The horse does fit the overall modernistic trend of the Denver International Airport. The roofs of the air and train terminals are replete with interesting curved surfaces. Here is the train station.

[A line terminal]

The huge "end-cap" looming over the terminal is the Westin Hotel, and integral part of the airport structure.

The roofs on theses structures are studies in architectural curves. The canopy over the rail station is a light mesh of steel girders that look to me like a hyperbolic surface. To see how that works, hold a sheet of paper out flat from your hand and try to support something, say, a pencil with it. You can't do it. Now give it a slight curve and try again. Just a slight curve will give the sheet much greater strength. 

The structure is also an arch, funneling stresses down to the two supports and into the ground.

Lightness and strength were prime considerations in the design of the airport. I read that early designs wouldn't stand up to the plains winds and had to be scrapped.

The escalator connecting the train terminal to the airport concourse is...large. If you're acrophobic, don't look up or down. Just keep your eyes straight and don't move around and you should be okay.

If you aren't bothered by heights, enjoy the art on the wall above you. I have left a lot out of this blog. I'm not trying to leave you some surprises. I could walk around the airport all day snapping photos and still cover only a fraction of what's there to see. For instance, if you visit DIT look for the gargoyles.

The terminal itself looks like a giant tent….because it is a giant tent. The roof is said to be designed to suggest Native American dwellings on the plains or snowcapped mountains. Regardless, it's made of Teflon coated fabric and held aloft by cables in much the same way that cables are strung on suspension bridges.

[The roof of the Denver International Airport]

Controversies abound at the airport and they're alright with that, as shown by the many Denfiles posters scattered around.

[Controversies]

Of course, the big "weird" murals help. Where I see a celebration of world cultures in an International Airport, many see cosmic relevance. Maybe I lack imagination…

[Leo Tanguma - In Peace and Harmony with Nature]

It doesn't take a lot of moving around in Denver to realize that Denver likes art. The airport is no different. It's an art museum in its own right. Check out the arts section of their website.

https://www.flydenver.com/about/art_culture/program

The plazas offer stunning views of the mountains and plains.

[Big sky]

[Pike's Peak]

And it's an airport, so I have to show one of these.

At 33,531 acres, Denver International us the largest airport in North America and the second largest in the world. It is the fifth busiest in the United States. I could wander around there for a few days and not see everything, and I will probably return. My bird watcher friend claims that there are good birdwatching areas on the property.

For variety, I returned home on the R Lightrail which connects Peoria with the Parker area. The Florida area looks like a popular shopping spot and there are several trails. It will feature in a later terminus blog.

Airports can be interesting places. I remember a sort of natural history museum with a huge, stuffed grizzly bear in the Great Falls, Montana airport, and very fondly remember the La Compass restaurant in the New Orleans airport. As many layovers I've had, I've had to find the time-killing points of interest. Is there an airport near you? You might want to check it out.

Walnut Hill

[Sunset over the Rockies]

Last week, we moved to a new neighborhood. This week I am exploring the area. True to form, Colorado is providing diversity.

[Snowy neighborhood]

Monday, it snowed while I explored the Southeastern corner of the Walnut Hill neighborhood. The area is nearly square, bordered by four busy streets, Quebec to the west, Arapahoe to the north, Yosemite to the east, and Dry Creek to the south. Our place is close to the center of this maze of streets and this first excursion let me find a short route out to Dry Creek Road.

[Dry Creek and Spruce]

Although the interior of Walnut Hill is hilly urban forest, the perimeter offers some broad vistas of the plains to the south and east, and the mountains to the west. The snow on Monday obscured most of that. On a clear day, you can see mesas between Denver and Colorado Springs and the solitary profile of Pike's Peak in the distance.

Most of Dry Creek Road is lined by walls on both sides in this area. Although the south side borders Willow Creek, a covenant neighborhood, Walnut Hill isn't a gated community, so I assume the walls are more to keep out street noises than to keep out intruders. The people here seem to be friendly and welcoming. There is a variety judging by the diversity of banners flying in the yards.

[The Good Shepherd Episcopal Church]

Churches display a wide variety of architectural styles. Over 40 years old (according to the website), Good Shepherd is a fairly recent addition to the diocese and the building reflects it with it's rough, shingle and brick facade and vertical lines. The congregation is outgoing and friendly.. 

[Walnut Hill Park]

This strip of greenway is a convenient east-west connector through the neighborhood, bypassing most of the traffic between Yosemite and Quebec. Little Dry Creek and the adjacent trail runs through it, providing me with an easy route to Yosemite, the Denver Tech Center, Arapahoe Lightrail Station, and Arapahoe Marketplace shopping center with it's bus stops. One bus runs straight west to the shops and government centers in Littleton.

[Cascade on Little Dry Creek]

Little Dry Creek is lined in several places with rock and there are several of these rock cascades along its course. They look better than the natural clay that blankets the Denver area and the sound of water running through rock is nice, but the primary purpose is erosion control. The clay is tough (try using a shovel on it) but soft and erodes easily...rock less so. 

As water flows downhill, it expends  energy by digging into the creek bed. An obvious character of this neighborhood is it's gradient from east to west. The creek is burning off a lot of energy here. The rock cascades are placed in areas of greater slope so the creek can drop energy on granite instead of clay.

One day later…

[Little Dry Creek]

it's spring again!

This is Colorado in the fall. We're right where the North American jet stream whips around like a hooked earthworm and it draws down brutally cold air from Canada one day and warm Pacific air from the west the next.

Weather is known to be a chaotic process, impossible to predict past a certain horizon. In South Alabama, where I lived before moving to Colorado, meteorologists could do quite well a week or so in advance. They do well to make accurate forecasts a day in advance here. Alabama's secret is that they watch us. We're where their weather comes from.

[Ducks]

Of course, the ubiquitous ducks use all the waterways in this area. Lots of waterfowl do. 

We used to be on some major migration routes for birds moving between Canada and points south but, as climates have shifted to warmer temperatures, many of the birds have decided that Colorado is a pretty nice place to just stay year round.

[The Rockies from Arapahoe]

The east-west streets in this area, like Arapahoe and Dry Creek Road, provide some pretty impressive views of the mountains. The parking lots at Arapahoe Marketplace are at a considerable elevation over the South Platte River Valley and provide some particularly nice views of Mount Evans and the mountains around it.

Just the elevation between Quebec and Yosemite here is around 75 feet (that's my elevation gain when I'm packing groceries from the grocery store to home). At home, I'm 440 feet above the river according to the National Map on the United States Geological Survey website, https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/advanced-viewer

A walk around the northeast corner of the neighborhood provides a good grasp of it's topography.

[Uinta Street]

The view down Uinta Street makes it quite obvious that Walnut Hill is the steep side of the valley cut by Little Dry Creek. The broad contours are the result of millennia of rare floods. The steeper gouge that the creek flows through is the result of constant scouring through the soft, sticky clay.

The clay that covers the area is the residue of weathered volcanic ash. Although there isn't much volcanic activity in the area now, There most certainly has been in the distant past (not so distant in geological terms). The two Table Mountains in Golden, ancient volcanoes, make that abundantly clear. The uplift caused by the Pacific Plate slamming into the western edge of North America, the origin of the Rocky Mountains, was a dramatic event. What we see today, the cragginess, has a lot to do with erosion by runoff, wind, and glaciers moving through the area.

But Little Dry Creek has done an impressive amount of work over the years. The elevation profile of Walnut Hill Trail gives a good idea of the drop in elevation…141 feet from Yosemite east of Walnut Hill neighborhood to Quebec at the west border. The trail has grades of up to 16. Trail grades, like most slopes are measured as rise-over-run, so that would be a slope of 16 feet up for a foot along the trail.

This profile was recorded using the AllTrails app. Elevation measures using GPS can be as much as 47 feet off in this area but comparisons with other sources like Google Earth indicate better accuracy. This profile might be around 20 feet off. 

A south-to-north profile along Spruce Street gives an idea of the shape of the valley. 

The profile isn't a straight slope down to the creek, water on the Earth's surface doesn't flow straight and, consequently, over time, the course of a stream changes and the surfaces carved into the ground are complex. Also, notice on the map that my path wasn't straight. Spruce Street is interrupted as it runs through the Walnut Hill neighborhood.

Notice that the southern slope of the valley is a lot higher than the northern slope. Well, not really. The northern slope continues on the other side of Arapahoe Road.

When I returned home, this flicker was waiting for me in my backyard. 

[Flicker]

Flickers are related to woodpeckers and sapsuckers. We have an abundance of all these in Colorado. Thanks to my birdwatcher friend for identifying this one.

These explorations happened in the space of a week and I help out in the Christ Church Episcopal Library on Wednesdays, which gave me an interlude. I took a train back to the old neighborhood. That gave me the opportunity to look around Village Center. The Lightrail Station features a long suspended walkway over Interstate 25. I'll have to revisit that when I write a blog on bridges. This one combines a walkway suspended by cables suspended by an arch.

[Bridge at Arapahoe at Village Center Station.]

I also checked out Tower 1 at Village Center, the twenty-two story building that can be seen from all the neighboring areas. The person at the information desk was informative. He explained that the tower was an office building built in 1987. The entire top floor is occupied by a law firm, so there's no public Access, but the view from the ground is nice.

[Tower One, Greenwood Village Center]

This odd little conical Hill is just at the boundary of the Lightrail Station. It's surrounded by … stuff - not particularly scenic stuff - but it's a pretty little conical Hill with a spiral walkway to the top.

[Conical Hill]

Two of the three highest peaks in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, Mount Evans and Pike's Peak, are visible from this area. The highest, Mount Elbert, is also the highest in Colorado, but it's a little too far west to be seen from here.

[Pike's Peak from Walnut Hill neighborhood]

And here's Mount Evans.

[Mount Evans from Walnut Hill neighborhood]

We also have our share of raptors. This young hawk scrutinize me from his perch in the western part of Walnut Hill Park.

[Hawk]

I frequently stop in at the Mini Moo Tea Shop in the shops along Arapahoe. They let me take a picture of their "dog".

[Mini Moo's dog]

Dry Creek Road, at the southwest corner of Walnut Hill, has some spectacular views of the Front Range.

[Front Range]

The snow capped peak to the right is Mount Evans.

I extended my walk in the southwest corner of the neighborhood along Quebec at the western border of the next neighborhood - Willow Creek. It resembles Walnut Hill in that the main topography is a creek valley. 

[Willow Creek]

On my last excursion, I noticed that Walnut Hill Elementary School has added an "A" to their curriculum. "STEM" is now "STEAM". "STEM" stands for "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics". STEAM adds "arts". There is a move to change it to STREAM and add "Reading and wRiting". It looks like we're back to the three Rs.

Your neighborhood is an adventure. Explore it.