A somber afternoon in Lyons

Nine months ago the Estes Park area was devastated by its most heavy rains, and then flooding, in decades.  The largest town worst hit was Lyons, primary entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park and the camping and resort town of Estes Park. Though all communities down this valley from the big Thompson River in Estes Park to Longmont on the flat prairie below had some damage, much of it severe, Lyons is where two branches of the St. Vrais creek come together. Right in the center of town.

Our first look at the loss came in a pretty expected way if you know our habits.  We were looking for the library.  But the library was gone- at least the inventory. The only books inside the locked doors of this quaint creek side building were sealed in boxes marked BOOK SALE.

We found the new location of the library, two blocks up on the higher ground of Main street, in a one room empty store. Apparently Google Maps had not been updated to this change yet.

A collage from the town museum

Today we saw, and were allowed to see, only a small part of the devastation in Lyons.

One poignant area of stony beach we did see had a heart above the word LYONS spelled out in flood tossed rocks.

On June 24, 2014, Jane Pittman reported on a meeting of researchers, academics and practitioners in natural disaster response. This gathering takes place annually in Broomfield, a town just downriver from another canyon devastated by the tremendous flooding of 2013. Boulder, the canyon our son lives near the top of, in the village of Nederland.

While Ms. Pittman's synopsis is fully reported here  http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/6-Takeaways-Colorados-Devastating-Flooding.html  These are the six key takeaways this years discussions realized from the 2013 Eastern Slope disaster.

1-Alerts must be specific.  Not color coded, or otherwise ambiguous.  As I type tonight much of the North Carolina coast is under hurricane watch, or worse.  When the order comes to evacuate, their can be no 'maybe' about it.
2-Work together. The old argument in business is that the ones who research and make the products and the ones who sell them never get together to discuss how to make and sell them best.  That must change in disaster relief, and prediction too.  Researchers and government agencies must work more closely together to avoid possible added disasters from miss-communication.
3-Plan for the BIGGEST, not just the BIG one.  Of course you can't so overbuild that nothing can afford to be built at all but even the ongoing flood mitigation plans in Boulder and Lyons just were way too little too late for the floods of 2013.
4-Community education is key. Why should Grandma and Grandpa, who have lived along the creek, or on the Outer Banks, for 50 years trust your evacuation notice today? And educate way before the education is needed.
5-Don't forget your pets.  Over 2,000 people lived in Lyons before the flood, but so did over 3,000 dogs and innumerable cats, gerbils, hamsters, etc.  pet rescue is not as critical as human rescue, but it comes a close second. Just ask any of those rescued who lost their pets in the raging waters.
6-Do the math. Almost a year later several hundred of Lyons families are still in temporary housing.  Compared to the thousands in New York state and New Jersey still out of their homes since Hurricane Sandy struck their Atlantic coasts in 2012. Recovery is not just about persons and pets.  Its about homes.

We met a family a couple of weeks ago living in their RV.  They were full-timing it, but not like us. They had lost their home and job in Sandy and were still hoping to go home.  And their home was not the fifth wheel they'd been living in for over a year.

Lyons is not new to floods.  There have been several, even many.  But none like the one of 2013.  Huge increases in home building, paved highways and other permeable surface and green growth destruction is partly to blame.  but all growth requires sound planning, and worst case scenario thinking well before the worst case happens.

For now, the people we talked to at the local ice cream shop, the museum, and elsewhere, are working as strong as they can to bring Lyons not only back, but better than ever.

The tourist trade in the Rockies isn't getting any lighter, so that should help in the long haul. But meanwhile, those hundreds of families still without homes could use some prayers.

-Ken

God Bless America

Can you think of the name of the song which has the line, "From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam..."?  Of course.  God Bless America !

We have literally gone from the mountains to the prairies today. From about 10,000 feet of altitude to about 5,000 or so.  From peaks of rocky grandeur to flat, or rolling, fields and farms producing the bounty of our country. And tonight we sleep in Hygiene, Colorado.

Hygiene is a small town just 30 minutes north of Boulder, on the very beginning of the mostly  flat, rolling, prairie that continues east for almost 1,000 miles to, actually, the Alleghenies. The deer, elk, mountain sheep, and marmot (yes, marmot- seen near Maroon Bells, Aspen) crossing signs are replaced by yellow diamonds with tractor silhouettes on them.

Founded by Rev. Jacob Flory of the United Church of the Brethren in 1883 this town was not planted out of the search for gold, silver, or even hay. Rev. Flory built his 'Hygiene Home' tuberculosis sanitarium here for sufferers from the east. He planned to find health for all. His facility was not the only one of its kind in this area.  The famous Kellogg family had their hands in nearby also, and part of the remains of another sanitarium in Coal Creek Canyon, above Boulder, still exist.

But there is nothing left in Hygiene of Rev. Flory's time here but his old Brethren Church, now a community center. Most sanitariums have disappeared as medicines allowed the sufferers to medicate where they lived, without moving across the country.

But Hygiene does have one thing from the nineteenth century that still remains.  The wonderful, clean, air.  Mona noticed it as soon as she stepped out of the coach when we parked for the July Fourth Weekend here at Hygiene United Methodist Church. The air is crisp, fresh, and friendly.  And so are the people.

Rev. Dawnmarie Fiechtner was happy to allow us to park out back of the Christian Ed Building, and invited us to Bible Study tomorrow night.  We just may attend, and we look forward to worshiping with the crowd here Sunday morning.

We'll have to wait till tomorrow to meet more of the town's residents, though we had a nice conversation with a couple married 37 years in the Praha Hungarian Restaurant just out of the center of town (pictured above). The closest neighbors we have met so far are the horses in the field next to the church prayer garden.


We'll be back in the mountains again during our time in central Colorado. Our son Jim may be able to visit a couple of places with us he'd like to photograph.  Mona needs to get to the Nederland post Office to pick up the second package of mail sent by Chris and Jenn, our daughters, to our attention there c.o. General Delivery. And we have been invited to spend a week with the O'Rourkes in their dream home overlooking Russell Gulch just outside of Central City.

But plains, mountains, or oceans (Mona is counting the days until we get to Hilton Head Island in October for the beaches and good friends there), God has surely blessed us with an amazing land to care for and enjoy. Thank you God, for the gift, and the responsibility, of caring for our land. And for allowing Mona and I to experience it.

-Ken

Back to the Future... AGAIN!

It was July of 1965 when Mom, Dad, brother Jim and I trekked west in our 1963 VW camper and ultimately through Independence Pass, from South Park to Aspen in Central Colorado.

The road was dirt all the way fortynine years ago, and the campgrounds were primitive in every way.  Dry camping (without hookups) was the ONLY way to camp.

It was in the valley of the Roaring Fork River, west of the Continental Divide, in the area a treaty had made an eternal Ute Indian Reservation, that we found what was left of the town of Independence, founded July 4, 1879, despite the treaty. Gold was the draw until that gave out in 1899 and everyone but a couple of hanger's-on left for better pickings... too late for the Ute.  They had already been transported to Oklahoma Territory and over 30% of the nation had died.

 66 years later the DeWalt family showed up to take these pictures of the rotting buildings of this true ghost town, some still with their original wooden roofs.

And today, 49 years after that momentous RV trip another DeWalt family, myself, Mona and Jim, walked those same streets, now being preserved by the county historical society.

 Today some of the buildings have actually been excavated and restored. Though their roofs are of metal so that they last much longer and preserve the delicate foundations for decades to come.





Some of the foundations are signed with their original uses, such as the old town hotel pictured here.

 And one of the restored buildings, the General Store, houses these two summer interns from 10 am to 6 pm, whose names I wrote down on a slip of paper and promptly lost somewhere along the road, darn it!  Boys, if you read this post, PLEASE, send me your names so I may credit you as I promised!

Independence Pass closes every winter.  In fact the guys in the store told me they had snow just a short while ago.  But the road is no longer dirt, and while there are two spots where it is only one lane with natural stone walls on one side and falling away cliffs on the other, the most dangerous stretches have guardrail.  Still, our coach would not have been allowed over the pass.  We were greeted at the entrance with signs that read, "If your vehicle is over 35' long, TURN AROUND NOW."

So Toad made it just fine alone, and Frog got to rest up in the campground back at Basalt, near Aspen, where there were FULL hookups and a pool, thank you.


-Ken