Old Standards & New Sentinels - Wind Chargers

Driving along US Highway 287 south of Lamar, Colorado, you arrive somewhere near the Gobbler's Knob Ridge before you actually catch a vision of what's to come. Rolling spin wheels arise from the highway like sentinels of espionage, awaiting take over. Then before you know what happened, you arrive amid these towers of sobering strength, so stupendously tall that you wonder how they were contrived and built across a flat land that drifts off to infinity.

As far as you can see, the towers flow across the prairie like an unending fence, neatly arranged in spectacular arrays of rows, lines, curls and cubes along the most traveled trails of natures highest winds. Towering over the back roads and rolling non-stop through the skies, these towers of energy generating power stand vigil.

Those tiny blue lines you see far beyond the green, hidden in the colors of the sky are power generating wind chargers, destined to greatness on the vast Colorado prairie.

A vision among change, are these magnanimous towers our future, or a mundane sequel of our past?

"As a general fuel source," Cleve Tidwell stated, “Wind is not an efficient energy source because you must refurbish or replace generators within a short period of time. Eventually, you’ll need to replace the blades and towers for the same reasons. They simply wear out, causing wind energy generation to be extremely costly.”

From this vantage point, the combination of old rock fence, built near the early portion of the 1900's by pioneering settlers who arrived in the area on the Homestead Act, demands as much attention as the Sentinels of the Future spinning behind it.

Is there value in the wind energy produced by these giants? Please take a moment and leave a comment about your views.

Real Cowboys RULE!

Cowboy rules for: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico,

Colorado, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana,

Utah, Idaho, Nevada... and the rest of the

Wild West are as follows:

1. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.

2. Turn your cap right, your head ain't crooked.

3. Let's get this straight: it's called a 'gravel road.'

I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter

how slow you drive, you're gonna get dust on your

Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

4. They are cattle. That's why they smell like cattle.

They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it?

I-10, I-40, I-70 and I-80 go east and west, I-17, I-15,

I-25 and I-35 goes north and south. Pick one and go.

5. So you have a $60,000 car. We're impressed. We

have $300,000 Combines that are driven 3 weeks a year.

6. Every person in the Wild West waves. It's called

being friendly. Try to understand the concept...

7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of

geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin' in during

the hunts, we WILL shoot it outa your hand. You

better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.

8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really

want sushi and caviar? It's available at the corner bait shop.

9. The 'Opener' refers to the first day of deer season.

It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the

first of November.

10. We open doors for women. That's applied to all

women, regardless of age.

11. No, there's no 'vegetarian special' on the menu. Order

steak, or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2

pounds of ham and turkey.

12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes:

meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt,

pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah . . We don't care what you

folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat....

IT AIN'T REAL CHILI !!

13. You bring 'Coke' into my house, it better be brown,

wet and served over ice. You bring 'Mary Jane' into my

house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a

truck, and have long hair.

14. College and High School Football is more important

here than the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers

and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.

15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water

hazards - it spooks the fish.

16. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump

crap ain't music, anyway. We don't want to hear it anymore

than we want to see your drawers! Refer back to #1!

A true Westerner will send this to at least 10 others and a

few new friends that probably won't get it, but we're friendly

so we share in hopes you can begin to understand what a

real life is all about!!! A Western Woman will plant it on a blog

for the world to see, and won't care whether you're western

enough to understand it or not.

White Cactus Flower

By Jan Verhoeff

This flower caught my eye as I returned to the vehicle after taking the photo of the dry river bed. Brilliant white blossoms surrounded by those tiny yellow buttercups filled the barrow ditch beside the road.

I leaned down close to the cactus to shoot this vibrant picture in the sunlight and took several photos. Between shots, I moved the camera away from my face and during the last shot, I saw motion just to the right of this particular screen.

In the flowers to the right a rattle snake coiled slowly, preparing to strike. Before he realized I'd spotted him, I jumped to the left and took off for the vehicle. After I was a safe distance away I looked back at him, still coiling in the flower, with his head up as if he was searching for the missing prey.

There are beautiful flowers on the prairie, but be aware that there are often ugly critters behind them.

Butte Creek

Don't let this dry creek bed fool you, during the rainy season (which is any day in which the clouds build up across the eastern prairie) this pleasant sandy haven for rattle snakes can become a raging river at flood stage carrying rattle snakes and debris toward the Two Buttes Reservoir.

In his book Rivers of Wind, Gary Penley talks about flooding along the creeks in southeastern Colorado, sharing the picture of a small boy held tight by his mother and grandfather as they escaped the raging flood waters up the base of a rocky cliff as their home washed away.

Cottonwoods grow in the basin of the river, the only place they can gather enough water to keep their leaves green through the year. In high water, many of them break off and become part of the rushing debris.

Two Buttes Mountain

Not nearly as far away as the mountain appears, this illussionary mountain rises from the prairie in a long slope to twin peaks, most often referred to as Two Buttes Mountain. This prairie, mostly never plowed feeds cattle and spreads as far as the eye can see. The eastern horizon may be as far as 40 miles from the standing point of this photo taken midway between Lamar and Springfield.

A Hundred Years of Progress

A hundred years of progress, from windmills used to draw water from the well and generate enough power to operate a radio or a small light in the early 1900's to Wind Towers standing in rows along the prairie in the early 2000's.

Emick Wind Farms

These magnificent sentinels stand along the drive to Emick Ranch toward the west.