More Pictures of Core Creek Park, Back in May

  I’m going back to the archives again for these pictures, which I took back in May at Core Creek Park.  The lake pictured here is Lake Luxembourg, which was constructed sometime around 1980.  Previously, it was a park named after the creek which ran through it, which was dammed up to form the lake.  Core Creek remains a stream as it enters and leaves the park property, but most of its run within the park limits is now flooded out.

  I’m not an engineer, so I have no real idea how it is planned.  I didn’t see any models or drawings of what the proposed lake was projected to look like.  There are busy roads nearby, and at least one bridge across the creek that probably had to be replaced.  There are several developments around the perimeter of the park, but in 1979 it was almost all farmland, and it was probably far enough away from the lake not to be affected by the flooding.  The development boom came later, in the early and mid-80’s, and this of course would make park side and lakeside properties desirable and expensive.  The houses and estates would maintain a high asking price as long as the flood hazard was minimal.

  Also nearby and just out of the view of the camera is St. Mary Hospital, which borders the park.  I often see medical staff taking walks on their lunch break, and there is a back entrance along the park road for ambulances to get in.  The traffic near the main entrance of the hospital can get congested, so this offers a back way during the rush hours.  There have been some improvements made to the roads near the hospital, but some of them are still narrow and weren’t really built to handle heavy traffic.

  If I remember right, I took these pictures in the mid-afternoon, and they look a little shadowy.  The picture of the field now looks a little blurry to me.  I checked the settings, which were on a relatively low shutter speed.  I forget if I took these pictures on automatic or if I set the controls myself.  I also forget how much I played around with the editing on Picasa. However, there is something I like about the blurriness, perhaps just the way the grass swaying motion is blurred.