I'm taking these first few hikes a little out of order. After Lincoln Station, the train stops at Sky Ridge, then Lone Tree City Center, and then the terminus - Ridgegate Parkway. Lone Tree is right next door to Ridgegate and it would be a quarter mile hike (if that much) if the short stretch between were not fenced and posted. To walk around through Lone Tree, you have to pass by Sky Ridge Station to get to Lone Tree City Center. And I'm not obsessive about it...
To recap, Sky Ridge Station is a gateway to Sky Ridge Medical Center, a sprawling hospital featured in passing in the last station-to-station blog. It's really big, I've visited friends and family there, and it has nice views of the Bluffs. 'nuff said about that
The photo above shows the direction I started walking from the Sky Ridge Station. The stations might be a half mile apart. I walked under a couple of overpasses and I was there. (shrug)
The bridge over Interstate 25 provides some nice views of the surrounding countryside. It's the plains so there's not much to obstruct the view. It was warm. The sky was a crystal clear blue with scattered clouds. My Neanderthalish blood was pretty close to it's boiling point, but...eh, a pretty day with lots of blues and greens.
The only road to Lone Tree City Center (posted private property surrounding it almost the whole way) was rather in disrepair. Prairie soil is spongey (grasses decay into a tough spongey mass. Try not to get roped into digging a hole in prairie soul.) and not a good base for structures like roads and buildings. For buildings, you get a lot of heavy equipment and dig down to some kind of solid bedrock and build from there. For roads, you need to lay down a bed that can stand up to a lot of abuse, and then build the road on top of that. I'm not sure if they intended this road to be permanent or not.
The light rail makes a graceful sweep over the Interstate and the approach road, and lightly touches down at the station.
And here's Lone Tree City Center and, if you don't believe me, here's the sign.
and here's Lone Tree City Center.
Okay, you're right. There's nothing there...well, the plains and that will be our next topic, but first let me flesh out why I'm standing in a wide expanse called "City Center". It's a huge development project, approved in 2018 that is intended to take up 400 acres and include thousands of homes, businesses and shopping areas.
Ummm...okay, that's it. They're still planning. Just wait for it.
Now, the plains...
As soon as the Colorado Plateau began to rise, erosion began to tear it down. In fact, eventually, the Rocky Mountains buried themselves. The plains used to ramp right up to the tops of the Front Range. They were 7,000 feet higher than they are today. There was no sudden wall of rock that there is today.
How do I know? Well, I read the books
Also, I've been on top of Lookout Mountain and seen remnants of the old plains up there, what the geologists call the Rocky Mountains Erosion Surface. Somewhere under all that debris are basement rock like the Pierre Shale and chunks of mountain like the Pikes Peak batholith. Eventually, enough of the debris got washed on down to the Gulf of Mexico (or what passed for the ocean back then) so that we have the gradual slopes we have today extending from the Mississippi River up to the mile high, high plains, and then the rock wall.
It's not really as flat as I make out. That's my kenophobia talking. The more accurate description for the plains is "rolling hills". There are even some pretty spectacular canyons out there. Erosion is still going on. There's just very little to break the line of sight. It just goes...on...so...far...
If I have to drive across the Great Plains, I much prefer to do so by night. Unbroken horizons make me crazy.
I sat around and admired the Bluffs and was thankful that the plains were back there where I wasn't, then I got back on a train and went home.
Some people actually like flat land! The plains actually offer much...lakes and winding rivers, history, grass lands (grasses are actually very cool if you get to know them), farms and tourist attractions related to them (how many corn mazes are there in the Midwest?) and a few big cities. If you like flat and sunny with an occasional wind that will pick up your car or truck and move it over...there, then don't mind me. Check out the Great Plains.
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