It's been so back and forth temperature-wise this winter in North Texas that even the weather geeks are going back into the record books to justify why this is happening. One thing is for sure. While the buds have started to open and the flowering red bud trees and dogwood trees are blooming, these every-other day cold fronts will slow down the full arrival of spring a bit. Noticeable also is the green showing up in the woodlands where the tree canopies have held down the cold and frost from reaching the ground which allows the trees and scrub bushes to stay a bit warmer than the open meadows.
With more down time than normal, it has allowed me to find problems with my camera settings and to experiment and to correct the issues that I have been having with the auto focus and other settings. So, it's not all being a bad thing. But, I am getting excited to be back out in warmer, sunnier, dryer and less windy days than what we have been experiencing here in North Texas.
Valentines Day will be mid 70s with a warm south wind. Since I have a doctor's appointment, that will get me out earlier. With being inside so much it had my schedule a bit out of whack. Today, in an effort to catch up on some routes that have really fallen by the wayside of late, I headed out for the Trinity mid-way between Irving and downtown Dallas.
Much to my surprise, some of the areas that normally are closed off from high water were open. That shows right there that the new pumping stations are up and running and above all, working. When I hit the ramp going down into the old Trammel Crow Park on Sylvan, the sand was like two feet deep in parts of the parking lots and they had not been cleaned off from the flooding. Walking across the old Sylvan Bridge, which is now literally 30 feet below the new bridge, the amount of wood and plastic that had been collected was astonishing. There was evidence that the crews had done some
work on the banks. There were also large 60 gallon trash bags full of plastic maybe. They had been neatly placed on the side of the bridge's west end waiting for a crew to pick them up. Large animal tracks from the river up onto the smooth riverbank's sides could have come for dogs, but they could have also come from a pack of coyotes, too. A person walking their dog would only have left one, maybe two, sets of tracks at most. These covered the entire area and could only have been made by a pack of many.
The purpose was to test the new settings on the camera that had been adjusted last night. I got my shots and headed back toward home with a quick stop at the grocery for dinner. Generally, I play a little game with myself to guess my mileage reading when I pull into the driveway. Tonight, I was off by two tenths!! Now bad from being cross town and not including where I would stop for groceries. The old man is still got some sharpness to him.
With more down time than normal, it has allowed me to find problems with my camera settings and to experiment and to correct the issues that I have been having with the auto focus and other settings. So, it's not all being a bad thing. But, I am getting excited to be back out in warmer, sunnier, dryer and less windy days than what we have been experiencing here in North Texas.
Valentines Day will be mid 70s with a warm south wind. Since I have a doctor's appointment, that will get me out earlier. With being inside so much it had my schedule a bit out of whack. Today, in an effort to catch up on some routes that have really fallen by the wayside of late, I headed out for the Trinity mid-way between Irving and downtown Dallas.
Much to my surprise, some of the areas that normally are closed off from high water were open. That shows right there that the new pumping stations are up and running and above all, working. When I hit the ramp going down into the old Trammel Crow Park on Sylvan, the sand was like two feet deep in parts of the parking lots and they had not been cleaned off from the flooding. Walking across the old Sylvan Bridge, which is now literally 30 feet below the new bridge, the amount of wood and plastic that had been collected was astonishing. There was evidence that the crews had done some
work on the banks. There were also large 60 gallon trash bags full of plastic maybe. They had been neatly placed on the side of the bridge's west end waiting for a crew to pick them up. Large animal tracks from the river up onto the smooth riverbank's sides could have come for dogs, but they could have also come from a pack of coyotes, too. A person walking their dog would only have left one, maybe two, sets of tracks at most. These covered the entire area and could only have been made by a pack of many.
The purpose was to test the new settings on the camera that had been adjusted last night. I got my shots and headed back toward home with a quick stop at the grocery for dinner. Generally, I play a little game with myself to guess my mileage reading when I pull into the driveway. Tonight, I was off by two tenths!! Now bad from being cross town and not including where I would stop for groceries. The old man is still got some sharpness to him.
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| Plastic flowing from the Northern Communities down the Trinity and collecting under the old Sylvan Avenue Bridge, now used as a crossover for the Skyline Bike Trail and its connections , old and new. |
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| The western edge of Downtown as seen from the West back of the Trinity at Sylvan Avenue bridge (old). |
