Country Club Tunnel
Usually when Phil and I go out exploring, all
the tunnels we've found on Google Earth and spent the whole night driving
out to see turn out to be a bust, but the random ones we happen across
in between are the awesome ones. Well, for once the eye in the sky
turned out to be correct.
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Just on the edge of a country club is
a tunnel more inviting than most of the snobs that golf here, I'm sure. |
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Phil found a golf ball retriever or something
like that. Like I golf? Don't ask me. |
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Big pipe inside a bigger one. |
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Merger. Upstream is to the right.
I don't know why it branches here as it heads downstream, but it does.
This breaks a natural law or something, doesn't it? Okay, not really,
but it doesn't make any sense. |
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Ah, animal tracks! We were on the
trail of something. We could see the eyes ahead in the distance as
well (though not in this shot). |
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He was fast, but Phil was faster!
Phil raced ahead and caught right up to the (o)possum, then managed to
get around him. That putting the little nasty between him and me... |
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So we could get shots like this.
Ready for the close-up! |
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Here's a good shot of us on either side
of him*. Since these guys are practically blind with the lights shining
on them, any time he headed toward either of us, we just made a little
noise, and he turned back. We managed to get quite a few shots of
him before we let him run off back downstream.
*Or her? |
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Up ahead it split and got lower.
This is actually looking back downstream after we were past this section. |
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Another shovel. No one believes
me about all the shovels you find in tunnels. |
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How about now? (Yep, it's a different
one. And only a few feel away from the first one.) |
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There was lots more junk in here as well. |
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A spot where it split up a couple ways
(the one all the way to the right is blind though; sealed up some time
back). We went with the one I'm standing in here. I don't know
where the one on the left leads. Maybe some other time? |
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Finally this is where we ended up.
The metal grate could hold back anything short of the Hulk. I was
pissed, but no one really cares all that much if they make me angry, and
I don't get any stronger when I am anyway.
We were looking out into what was apparently
a floodplain of some sort. We were on one side and we could see a
drain on each of the other three sides, albeit quite a ways a way.
At this point we needed a way out.
We had to see what was going on here. |
That's
me going into the shaft to the right. Phil previously tried the one
on the left, but it really didn't lead anywhere productive, just to a small
room with a huge grate above him similar to the one we were facing at the
terminus of this section and now trying to skirt.
Fortunately I had better luck here.
I popped out of a small manhole over a drain. We got all the gear
out of it and headed out for a look around. We were behind a bunch
of houses late on a Sunday night, so we didn't want to attract any attention.
As a result, we didn't get any pictures for quite a while in this part
of the trip... hence the text-to-pixel ratio skyrockets right here.
Once we were both out, we made the circle
of the floodplain. This is going to sound like Goldilocks here, but
honestly, the first of the three remaining tunnels was similarly sealed
off with the giant barrier grate, so no luck there. The second was
wide open, but was very small (crouching right from the start). The
third was wide open, so we made our way to it.
By this point, all the dogs in the neighborhood
were flipping out of the fact a couple guys were walking through the floodplain
where apparently no one ever goes. Wanting to give them and their
owners some peace, we ducked into the tunnels and continued upstream.
We didn't plan to return that way.
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No shortage of wildlife upstream along
here either. See all the poop? They probably caught and ate
whatever this used to be back at the floodplain. |
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Hey, gecko! If you like these guys,
come hang out on my front porch some night. If we turn the lights
on, it's a smorgasbord for the gang that congregates there. |
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Finally we decided to just head back up
to the surface and head home. Only problem? We had no idea
which way to go. Well, we made an educated guess, but the specifics
were beyond us. We were in the "bad side" of FW at 2am without a
clue or firearms. I made a call to Dani/Trinity and she played operator
and 'ported us out. |
Alexplored
3/16/08. Some pics by Explorer Phil.