This is the first post of this 2015 trip, written at around 11 pm on July 2
The first travel day began at 8:30 with computer and website work, including setting up the basic template for this website. A stop at the tire dealer and finally on the road about noon.
By Espanola I realized that I really was on the road, and could take up to 3 1/2 days to travel what could be done in 2. So rather than going through Abiquiu, Regina and Cuba to Farmington, and then toward Four Corners, I headed up through Ojo Caliente, TP, and Alamosa and up the San Luis Valley. I’m in southern Colorado, at Orient Land Trust, which used to be known as Valley View Hot Springs. It’s a pretty lovely place, at the base of the steeps and looking out over this beautiful high desert valley surrounded by peaks, including some fourteeners. I’d been invited to spend a day there in return for a half hour of Sindelar Solar consulting last April, I think.
I spent time in some of the pools, and as dusk approached I chose to set up camp among the trees and a tiny warm stream rushing by, rather than head out at dusk. I’ll head west through Pagosa, Durango, Cortez and Four Corners tomorrow.
The entry of the hot water into one of the pools. Photos are allowed of the pools and facilities but not of patrons, to respect personal privacy.
Because I had advised on RE issues, I was invited to see the power plant that runs the entire facility. No solar, just hydroelectric, the energy of falling water, the holy grail of off grid clean energy on this scale. Most or all of the buildings are heated geothermally – that is, hot water from the earth pumped through them for heat. And the electricity comes from a beautiful hydro plant, for which I was given a private tour by Mark Jacobi, the Facilities Manager here. He’s been here for five years, has a 30-year background in many types of construction (I can relate!) and appears at peace doing good work here.
The full hydroelectric generator with Mark, its master
I’ll save the technerd stuff for those who write in to inquire, if I can. I’ll just focus on one part that quite blew my mind. The hot water leaves the earth at about 92°F, comfortably warm but not the temperature of a normal hot tub, around 106°F. The two hot pools are 104° and 108°. The additional heat comes from the water in the stone pools passing first through a heat exchanger with eight or 10 immersion heating elements, each turning about 4500 watts of energy directly into hot water. They are sequenced in stages to take up the excess electricity being produced, as with hydro it has to go somewhere at all times. It works beautifully, and is a cleanly done, professional system. The kinetic energy of the falling water adds to the heat already there.
Grey dreadlocks down to his ass. I couldn’t achieve that – done with long hair – but I respect those who do.
I would like to return here in winter, when it’s not a weekend and not a holiday and not summer, for the quiet and peacefulness. Clothing is optional throughout the facility, so it tends to attract a particular crowd, a tribe perhaps, with which I identify from my early adult days. I feel an innate sense of belonging with the baby-boom counterculture, and an essential part of that remains here.
This is the insulated tank with the electric heating elements to bring up the pools’ temperatures.
I have seen three lone coyotes crossing my path in the last two days, well more than usual. What kind of omen might that signify? Historically coyote is the trickster. I’ll be magician but not trickster in my elderhood.
So much more I could write, but it’s late and I need to rest. Maybe tomorrow I’ll give a synopsis of what this is all about.