The Drop-Off Tunnel: A partial re-run
My friend Tony happened to be in town and had never done any major tunnels before, so I told him about this one.  Coincidentally, he had lived in this area at one point and was amazed to find these existed without him (or almost anyone else) ever learning of them.  Since my camera crapped out on me last time, this was a good opportunity to revisit the parts where I didn't get any pictures and to take a closer look at areas I had rushed through last time.
On this trip we started from the curbside drain where Dani and I exited last time, then worked our way back downstream.
At this point, the tunnel is pretty narrow, but if you've see the other galleries, you know it expands to much greater volumes.

That's Tony's friend Tommy who joined us.
Tony spotted this garden snake down here.  I didn't get a good frame of reference for him, but he was probably right at 12" in length.  He was a surprisingly good swimmer for not being a natural water snake (at least, he didn't look like any I knew).
There are several sections like this where the water is channeled to the center by these raised sides.  We also saw several sections like this in the Three-Way tunnel.
This is a side tunnel across from a good exit I was checking out for a GPS reading. 

We didn't bother with the side tunnel this time either.  It's funny how a tunnel this size would have gotten my interest in another context, but when you see a big one in a giant tunnel, you completely ignore it in favor of all the other goodies.
There's a short stretch (about 150') in here where the floor had collapsed along one side of the tunnel, leaving some really deep spots.
Thankfully, there were two parallel tunnels along this part because this one (not the one we took) had some sewerage leaking into it.

This is the worst I've seen in a tunnel so far, however.  Most of these are pretty clean and thoroughly flushed out every time it rains.
Continue to Part II