I rode out to the north end of Draper Lake yesterday; it was a good workout hitting the steep hills and checking out the work on the bikeway. Today I rode around the lake to view the rest of the work. I note that the dewberries and blackberries are all gone, but the sand plums are still numerous and delicious.
This shows the unrepaired flood damage from the last couple of months when we had heavy rain. This is along the eastern shore of the lake where the crews had put down the first layer last winter and then came that long period when no work was done at all. Now the crews are out again and bringing the northern end around to meet this part. Except for a couple of difficult sections where nothing has been put down in the dirt, we should soon have at least one layer down for the entire loop. However, as seen in this picture here, some of it will have to be redone.
The smallest point has begun to reemerge from the high water mark we hit last month. It looks to me like the work crews are different guys from last year. The company trucks have a different logo. The workers are actually less friendly to me passing them out on their work sites along the bikeway, but I think they are working faster.
Here again is the image I shot last month showing the crews were finally back on the creek crossing below the dam. They weren’t just playing around down there.
Because this is the shot from today, showing that the basic dirt work for the crossing is finished. Granted, there is quite a bit more work left to get it connected with the dead-end of the finished work coming from the west shore side, but there’s really not that much left to do. There is still one open culvert that must be replaced with a closed one, and about 100 meters of bikeway to construct. This short stretch has seen virtually no work at all so far.
Still, I think they now have some crews that will actually do the job. It could conceivably be finished before my birthday in September, though I’m not holding my breath.
