Jordan River Trail

This was the first time I had walked the Jordan River Trail. Access is pretty close to my house and I don't really know why I haven't done it before. This morning I decided that I would get some exercise and check it out.

This time of the year isn't the best for the plant life and I've found that I like the river trails the best during the fall when fallen leaves cover the trail and all the trees have so much color.

There has been a lot of construction around the trail near my place and this small artificial damn is part of it. It looks like there will be apartments built next to the river here and if they put one of these in it gives the river more depth above it and a taste of rapids below, but I wonder what it's impact on the river life will be.

Now this picture below makes me wonder... A lot.

This is a pipe that comes out of the ground and has quite a bit of water coming out of it and next to it is this sign that says "Warning; Reclaimed Sewage Water, Do not drink"(picture below) I know that there has to be many regulations to govern what can be let out into the river but I would have loved it if they could have put another sign up. One that explained what was done to the water to make it safe to pumped into the river and assurance that it wasn't going to add the the pollution already in the river.

Before I complain about large rusted pieces of metal with sharp edges sitting on the ground right next to the trail I do have to say that I was pleasantly surprised that there was not more litter on the section of trail I walked. First I walked down 70th south and noticed the ground was almost covered in places with trash. This did not give me much hope that the trail would be clean, yet I found the trail to have trash cans every hundred yards or so and people were using them. Although there were a couple of spots that defied the norm had a bit of trash scattered about.

Above is a picture of another spot where water from somewhere else was being drained into the river. Unlike the reclaimed sewage, this one did not have a sign saying what it was but this spot seemed to have the most trash and I was surprised to see a child's sandal included in the mix. I'm not a big environmentalist but I do believe we need to keep ourselves and our world clean. This type of stuff disgusts me.

But I do recommend walking the river trails. They tend to be a nice sanctuary from the daily grind and sometimes you get to see some amazing wildlife.