Photos: Eleven Mile Reservoir to Wray, Colorado

Heading toward home now.  It's always a bit sad to see the mountains fading from view in the rear-view mirror.

Early morning at the Rocky Ridge Campground beside Eleven Mile Reservoir.

Locking the camper door... and we're ready to go!

Outskirts of Colorado Springs in the foothills

Horse and donkeys

Antelope

How many antelope can you see?

As we drove north from Limon at about 4:30 p.m., we passed between two huge wind farms, one on the east, and one on the west.  We saw those big turbines, one after another, for about half an hour without letup. 

On the east was the Limon Wind Energy Center.  This, from their website:  In 2012, Blattner Energy completed a 400-MW wind project spanning more than 55,000 acres in the Mountain region of the United States.  Blattner built both phases of the project, each consisting of 125 1.6-MW turbines.  The complete scope of work included construction of 69 miles of access roads, foundation and turbine installation, installation of 68 miles of underground collection, and construction of two 345-kV substations.  Despite an accelerated schedule, Blattner safely delivered the project on time.

On the west and north (the road jogged east for a ways) was the Cedar Point Wind Farm.  This, from their website:  The 250MW Cedar Point Wind Farm, which is the second biggest wind farm in the state of Colorado after Cedar Creek I Wind Farm, is owned and operated by a US affiliate of Canadian pipeline company Enbridge.  The wind farm is located 80 miles east of Denver in Limon, Colorado, and was developed by Renewable Energy Systems Americas (RES) with an investment of $535m.

Enbridge signed an agreement with Colorado-based RES to develop the Cedar Point Wind Farm in June 2010.  RES began construction in August 2010.

The electricity generated by the wind farm is transmitted to the Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo) transmission grid.  PSCo, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, signed a 20-year, fixed-price power purchase agreement with RES in March 2010 to buy power from the wind project, which was completed ahead of schedule in September 2011.  The project provides power to approximately 80,000 homes.

Approximately 20,000 acres of private land across Lincoln, Elbert and Arapahoe counties were leased for the construction of the wind farm.  The construction included two major installations – the setting up of the wind turbines to harness wind and laying the power transmission lines.  Two substations were built, in addition to an operations and maintenance building.

Vestas supplied 139 1.8MW wind turbines that were installed in the eastern part of Elbert County and the western part of Lincoln County. The turbines were manufactured in Vestas’ factories in Windsor, Brighton, and Pueblo, Colorado.  A 42-mile private transmission line passing through Arapahoe County was constructed to transmit the electricity generated to the grid at PSCo’s 345kV Missile Site Substation.

Big whirlwind out in the field

There were storms to our east, but we were treated to this really strange cloud formation.

Isn't it odd?

Quite strange.