Bowsaw at Goodwin, plus birds

 

During our stay in Boulder, CO, we visited a place just one mile from my parent's house, yet I had previously been there only once as a teenager (that I can remember).  Back then it was called Goodwin Memorial.  Today it is known as Legion Park.

I had this horse named before I got him.  I wanted a strong, simple word full of unthinking power, but it wasn't until I was trimming our blue spruce, 'with only a bowsaw and a rusty pair of hedge shears,' that I realized this was the right name.  The blanket is by Nichelle Jones (thanks Nichelle!).

(Don't fret: not all these pix have Fireheart in them.)  The top of Goodwin hill, just north of Arapaho Ave, east of town, normally has a beautiful view west to the mountains and east to the plains.  But this day we were seeing a spectacle so rare that there was a continuous stream of photographers driving up, shooting and leaving. 

All four days of our drive out to CO and at least half of our 12 days in Boulder were smothered in smoke and haze.  Instead of the glorious views of the Rockies, or even of Nebraska, we were entombed inside a bluesilver mist.  You could be 15 miles from the Front Range and not even see it.  In all my life, I have never witnessed anything quite like this.  (And I have childhood memories of Denver's Brown Cloud.)  It was equal parts amazing and depressing.

Goodwin was built in the CCC era.  I recall it as a great spot for submarine races  :)  and to take your date to when you learned to drive.  Fortunately there were few cars while I shot Bowsaw.  The general spectacle was too much competition for a mere model horse.

Here is the view straight west, across Boulder to the Rockies.  Normally you can see Sugarloaf, Indian Peaks, the High Divide with Mt Audubon and Longs Peak to the north.  But this time, it's Valmont Public Service, long ago coal-burning but these days definitely not.

Swing slightly to the right, north, and here are the reservoirs.  Yes the air really was so bad you could not see the horizon.  This was August 7th, Saturday, later found to be the worst day of all that week, and the only time I actually smelled smoke.

Here is the entrance road, looking south.  The only way to get to this park is by turning right while coming in west on Arapaho Avenue.  No left turns on Arapaho there!

It's a simple gravel parking lot with stones around it, but I had forgotten how long the entrance road was.  In this picture, Arapaho Ave is just beyond those trees.

In this picture, still looking south, you can see a 'barn' on the horizon, just left of 2 pine trees.  That 'barn' is actually a house at the bottom of my parents' neighborhood.

Here we're looking west by south-west.

Stepping right and looking west again.  The lakes were originally there for cooling purposes for the power plant.  Nowadays they're refuges for birds and no one can go there.  Valmont Reservoirs.  There's 2 lakes obvious on the map of southern Boulder, Valmont and Baseline.  I grew up within a stone's throw of Baseline, named after the fortieth parallel.

In this picture, the white car is ours.  We're looking north.

A few more shots of Bowsaw:

I can't explain why I'm so taken with a bridle-unfriendly horse.  I'll come up with something...

He wanted to get going.

 I promised there would be birds.  See those tiny dots on the lake?

Canadas.  Not the first time I've used the zoom feature of my camera to identify birds.

And here's something I originally thought was a,... pelican?... a Loch Ness monster??  Nope, only a cormorant on a rock....

 The day was so weird and the atmosphere so strange that people were moved to do silly things,

instead of acting like upstanding, normal citizens.  This is the north end of the park.

Yours truly.  If I stood up, my hat disappeared into the white sky.

We were standing around at the north end, knowing we should leave and not breathe such bad air any more than we had to, yet treasuring the eerie peace and aloneness and uniqueness of it all, when I spotted this magpie on the entrance wall.

What a lovely zoom feature.  Thank you Fuji!

You will be glad to know that in the latter half of our visit, the sky turned blue again and we could see the mountains as they had always been.