Oak Station to Garrison Station

Lakewood Gulch Trail isn't as reliable as I thought it would be. It's chopped up by private properties and I had to do a little road work on this hike, but not much and it was through an interesting neighborhood with what looked like mini-ranches.

Following Oak Street South from Oak Station, I rejoined Lakewood Gulch where I left it the last hike.

Green Mountain is still a prominent feature of the western horizon.

The landscape makes me think that the stream was already well established with a valley before erosion control structures and a rock lined channel was installed. The Wikipedia article states that it occasionally floods even now.

At Oak Street, Lakewood Gulch enters Sunset Park. There is a bicycle park at the eastern end of the park and the trail changes from paved walks to a dirt road until Kipling Street.

I don't expect to see a lot of life in the stream. It passes through so many residential areas that water quality sites on the Internet show large amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen, and bacteria in the water from runoff. The valley has a lot of diversity of healthy looking plant life, though.

Denver is good about providing these little neighborhood parks. They're dotted around all over the metro area. They will usually include a playground, like this one, a picnic shelter, and walking trails that connect with one or more greenways.

This playground is cushioned. The colorful surface is nice and bouncy, but I wouldn't want to slide on it. It has little sharp particles suspended in it, like the tiny "rocks" in roof coatings that come loose in rain storms and collect in the dirt around houses.

The trail ends at Kipling Street. Part of Colorado highway 391, Kipling Street is next to Independence Avenue (the alphabetical order isn't accidental - street names actually aren't random). The street was originally named "Howell Street" for Carson Howell, a veteran of the Sand Creek Massacre. I don't know when the name was changed. It's been Kipling since I moved to Colorado in 2013, and, yes, it was named after Rudyard Kipling.

I had spotted a tiny museum on the map while planning this hike and decided to visit it.

Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls, and Toys (830 Kipling St., Lakewood, Colorado, 80215)

Never pass up a tiny museum. They're often some of the best. They tend to be staffed by people who are passionate about their field and know what they're talking about. The toys here reflect Colorado history.

In keeping with my current themes of chemistry and geology, I couldn't pass up showing this old Gilbert Chemistry Set. I know it's old because, by the time I came along, the chemicals were in plastic bottles. These are cardboard (I assume, waxed) canisters.

Alfred Carlton Gilbert, a magician by trade, started the Mystic Manufacturing Company with his friend, John Petrie in 1909. Originally, it was a supplier of equipment for stage magicians but in 1911, they invented the erector set (another passion of my childhood). The first chemistry set was put out (did I really say "put out"? I started so many fires with my chemistry sets!) in 1922. They also produced other science sets including vacuum tube (there were no transistors radios back then and certainly not integrated circuits) radio kits.

If you're interested, there is a website that has a lot of information on the old science kits.

http://science-notebook.com/index.html

They also present a lot of the old, "classic" experiments.

In addition to displays-under-glass, the museum also has some hands-on displays, plus! there are hosted events so, if you plan to be in the Denver area, check to see if they have something coming up at

https://www.dmmdt.org

The walk from Kipling to Garrison was a street through a residential area.

Garrison Station, as usual, had art. 

This piece, Winds of Change, by Mike Squared Mosaics, is a long (20 wall panels) tile mosaic representing changes in the area from prehistoric times to the present. If you look closely, you can see sunflowers and butterflies along with the square tiles.

The W line is sandwiched between highway 6 To the south and Colfax Avenue to the north, so there are always amenities close by. Before catching the train home, I strolled up to Ziggi's Coffee on Colfax for a dry place (there was a rare Denver downpour) and a snack.

Federal Center Station to Oak Station

The Eastern Continental Trail, which includes the Florida Trail, the Alabama Roadwalk, the Pinhote Trail, the Appalachian Trail, and the International Appalachian Trail, will carry you from Key West, Florida to Belle Isle, Newfoundland and Labrador, 4,400 miles. But it requires a lot of walking on trails, plus roadwork and waterwork.

Roadwork happens when no foot trails have been developed, like the stretch in Alabama between the end of the Florida Trail and the beginning of the Pinhote Trail near Weogufka, Alabama. They're also places in Canada where there is water that must be crossed.

It's not that I've done all that. I just wanted to introduce some terminology, because even on these short station-to-station hikes, I end up doing a lot of roadwork.

Starting at Federal Center Station in Lakewood, I had to figure out how to get across highway 6 on my hike to Oak Station. Of course, I did my homework before starting out.

There are some parts of the Denver Metro area that are not pedestrian friendly...few street signs, trails, sidewalks. I would prefer not to walk on a busy overpass with no sidewalk. Luckily, the satellite images in Google Maps clearly show sidewalks and the dashed lines of crosswalks and the length of Union  Boulevard and Simms Street from the Federal Center to the trailhead of the Lakewood Gulch Trail was okay.

So, I left the train at Federal Center Station and climbed the hill to Union Boulevard, which was a backtrack from my last hike along the W Line. Crossing the light rail and highway 6 turned out to be easy roadwork.

The arch in the distance is the W Line where it crosses highway 6.

Simms Street and the light rail approach each other near the Lakewood Gulch Trail, then the W Line turns east toward downtown Denver. Collins Road crosses Simms there and the trailhead for the Lakewood Gulch Trail is a few steps down Collins in Bellows Park. 

Looking at the Wikipedia article for Lakewood Gulch, I think that might be my ticket from Oak Station to Auraria West Station.

Like all the "gulches" in the Denver area, Lakewood Gulch is an artificial channel for directing storm water through East Denver.  It has been subject to flashfloods in the past.

Occupying the distance between Simms Street and Oak Street is a large medical equipment manufacturing company, Terumo Global. The Greenway that runs through it's grounds reflects the technological focus.

I'm not sure what molecule the tetrahedral model is supposed to represent but it's appropriate given how many biological compounds have the form. Carbon can bond to up to four other atoms and, since atoms tend to space themselves out as far as they can, the tetrahedron is common in organic compounds.

On the far side of the gazebo is a double helix model, I assume, of DNA.

Parts of the trail give nice views of the surrounding area including green Mountain.

The convenience of Lakewood Gulch (for me, at least) is that it crosses side streets that run short distances north to W Line stations. Oak Street was well marked and I took it to Oak Station.

All of the light rail stations and the larger bus stops in Denver display art by named artists...murals, windscreens, and larger works, like the whimsical, Tread Lightly, by Joshua Wiener. The seven steel boats on legs make me think of Baba Yaga's Marina.

The train ride back ended at my home station, Arapahoe at Village Center, and I was surprised to see the water feature at Village Center Tower One operating, so I took some pictures.