The obligatory Rocky Mountains shot, this time from County Line Road.
A common city layout has straight roads in a grid with roads running east-west and north-south. In the Denver Metro area, the north-south roads are usually called "boulevards", and the east-west are avenues. The landscape tends to be hilly and obstruct long views on the boulevards but the avenues run down long slopes to the South Platte River and then back up the other side of the river valley. Going west, that affords some striking vistas of the Rocky Mountains.
The word "boulevard" looks French, and it is. It was originally the flat surface of a rampart but became the term for a promenade that ran along a city wall, then a road that circled a city, like circumferential bypasses in many modern cities.. It usually implies a broad thoroughfare planted with shade trees.
"Avenue" is also French and originally denoted a straight, tree lined street. Ironically, Denver has an Alameda Avenue. "Alameda" is the Spanish equivalent of the French "avenue". We have an Alameda Avenue in Denver.
County Line approximately follows the line between Douglas and Arapahoe counties. It also parallels Colorado 470, which is Denver's circumferential bypass.
Occasionally, I will lose a trail. Somehow I got off Willow Creek Trail and ended up in the middle of the Willow Creek Covenant community (aka HOA - Home Owners Association). These folks usually live in walled villages because they like the security of living around stable populations of homeowners and they tend to be suspicious of outsiders. Many of the popular trails in the Denver area run through HOAs. It always makes me edgy to find myself in an HOA. I've seen too many horror movies (The Stepford Wives, Black Cove, Fear Itself: Community, there was even an X-Files episode).
I did appreciate the appearance of this Little Free Library, a corner bookswap supported by the Little Free Library organization, and the facing title was Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (it's, uh, not really about wolves, by the way).
Predictably, as I came to residents, they looked at me like "Who is this guy?" but, when I asked how to get back to the trail, they brightened up and became chatty.
When I rejoined Willow Creek, I found that it had grown considerably.
Most of these creeks have numerous tributaries, but they also run over active aquifers creating a dynamic give-and-take with the local ground water. The Dawson and Arapahoe formations are close to the surface around Willow Creek.
Willow Creek Open Space provides a wide park in the center of the Willow Creek community. It also provides a rare public restroom along the 8 mile trail.
The stream gouges out some tall banks into the soft sandstone and clay of Arapahoe county.
The school has a memorial to family members lost in the 9/11 attacks.
As I walked up Dry Creek Road, my neighborhood, Walnut Hill, was to the left and the Willow Creek community was to the right. This is home territory.
Dry Creek Station has the longest pedestrian bridge I've seen at any of the RTD stations.
When a train leaves a station, the light at the next station comes on. It's not really there for the riders. The three colors mean about the same thing for the conductors as they do on traffic lights for cars. Green means the track ahead is clear, amber means to proceed with caution, and red means that there's a problem down the track.
The E/F Lines and the R/H Lines out to Peoria and the airport are complex with branches and parallel tracks that can turn into a single track that carries traffic in both directions. And the overhead lines that feed the electric light rail trains have to keep up with the rails. During the time I've been using RTD, these lines seem to have most of the technical problems. I'm going to assume the complexity has something to do with it.
But the train always arrives, eventually, and carries me on up the line and to home, which is currently Arapahoe at Village Center Station - next destination.
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