The southeastern lines of the RTD light rail are all about cities and plains. There's nightlife, great restaurants, attractions, and hiking on the plains and foothills. I live very near the Valley Highway, the stretch of I-25 that passes through the Denver area on the narrow ridge between the South Platte River and Cherry Creek valleys. The southeastern light rail lines parallel the highway.
For the next few hikes after Lincoln Station, I'm going to diverge from the huge shopping areas near the highway and explore Willow Creek (which we saw seeping from the Denver Formation aquifer at the base of The Bluffs.) At Arapahoe Station I'll pull back to the areas around the highway to explore some more urban settings like the Denver Tech Center, Denver University, Washington Park, and Broadway.
On the way to Arapahoe Station, I met this guy. They're a garter snake. It's about the fifth snake I've seen since I moved to Colorado. I'm a little disappointed. Watching the movies, I expected to see snakes under every boulder.
Back at Sky Ridge Station, I surveyed my surroundings.
It's actually a pretty nice vantage point to view the Bluffs and the Rockies. If you want to take in the Bluffs from light rail, it's a good choice. Leaving the station, just take Sky Ridge Avenue straight to Belvedere Park and follow Willow Creek up to the top.
But that wasn't my destination this time. I took a minute to check with my "weather station" (my bones told me that if there was rain on the way, it would hold off for the duration of the hike. My bones are pretty reliable. But I wanted to play with my stuff.)
Lemme see. 30 inches of Mercury and rising. That's about one bar (a little high for this elevation...right at normal sea level pressure, though.), 101,000 pascals (looks heavy but weather is generally measured in hectopascals- a hectopascal is 100 pascals pressure), 762 torr. The weather looks pretty stable. No reason to expect thunderstorms. 80.2 degrees hot. 45 percent humidity...probably not enough moisture in the air to fuel any storms
That's a screenshot from my Trail Sense app. It's a pretty nice utility for active people. It has a display for local weather that uses the phone's on board sensors and local and historical weather data. The barometric pressure is less than a tenth percent off from my Dekota pocket weather meter, so I'll forgive that. Again, high pressure rising looks like stable weather.
My barometer readout hasn't been calibrated and 819 hectopascals is pretty low. What's the altimeter say?
Eh, we're outside of the Denver Basin so, over a mile in elevation. I'll accept that. The official Wikipedia elevation of Lone Tree is 5948 feet and the train Station is up on the ridge with the Interstate and the light rail. All instruments seem to be in good working order.
Actually, none of that is a surprise to me. As a pedestrian, my weather sense is pretty fine tuned, but if I were in the mountains with no connectivity, these instruments would prove their value. It's nice to see that they work well, occasionally.
I could have walked a short distance through that little park near the station (see the last station-to-station blog) and I would have ended up at Lincoln Avenue, but it wouldn't have been much of a hike. Instead, I did a little road work and landed at the same place. There were fairly unremarkable high-rises.
Looking down Lincoln, I saw the leaf sculpture I had been seeing in the distance from Lone Tree...
so I decided to take a closer look.
It displays Denver's appreciation for cable-stay bridges. Instead of a mast, there's a nice looking leaf sculpture. I used it too get to the other side (sorta like the chicken). Then I walked up to the Interstate and the approach sidewalk to Lincoln Station.
The approach path is the longest one I have seen at any light rail station in the Denver area.
The pedestrian bridge, a typical cable-arch structure, provides a nice view of the countryside.
Again, it's the high plains but, specifically, Cherry Creek valley. Cherry Creek is over there, somewhere.
Lincoln Station is surrounded by several buildings-looks like apartments, businesses, and at least one cafe. It looks popular. The above fountain was at the other side of one. Denver likes it's water features.
And, speaking of water features, I'll be exploring Willow Creek next time.
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