Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to share some photos of the beautiful reservoir the little man and I went walking at!
Wachusett Reservoir and Dam
The little man and I are always up and out for an adventure. We tend to get to traveling some decent distances for a good time when it comes to going for a walk, hike or going fishing. We did both with this trip! The Wachusett reservoir is one of the most beautiful places in central Massachusetts, besides the other giant reservoir the Quabbin. The Quabbin though isn't as walkable as the Wachusett is, and it definitely shows!
The little man and I were going out for a fishing trip, we had something to do in this area and figured that we might as well try to do some fishing while we were out there. I remember as a kid I had an uncle that used to love fishing the place, he would always catch these crazy ass fish too! I knew that I wanted to check it out, since we aren't normally in this area too often, so off we went!
One of the things that's great is that they share a lot of history in many of these places. The Wachusett reservoir was actually used as a model for some of the massive construction projects around the world like the Panama Canal! That's insane to think about, something as world-renowned as the Panama Canal got some of it's inspirations and ideas from somewhere up in Massachusetts. The reservoir here was built sometime in the early 1900's, where the often way to build these things is to move the local people that had been living in the area out and flood the whole area creating the reservoir. That happened a lot sadly lol.
When it was built in the early 1900's it was the largest reservoir in the world! That's crazy, because a few dozen miles west of this place here is the Quabbin reservoir which is the biggest reservoir in Massachusetts, and one that is also freaking gigantic lol. The beauty of the place is incredible though! I love that they don't allow boats on it, because that helps keep the pollution and other things down, which you certainly want when you have a water supply such as this. There are many towns around it and hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the water from this, so you need to keep it as clean as possible!
One of the amazing things about this place though is the crazy amount of walking distance that you can undertake to go about it! Where we parked, you start at the top of the dam and then you can make your way down to the bottom of it and where the water flows out and into the tributary river here and outward from there. The trees were in quite a nice bloom and I don't think we stopped to pay attention to the tree and learn what kind of tree it was lol it isn't quite a crabapple that is my favorite, but it did have a decent smell to it! I think we will have to go back and see what we can uncover with the plant app to see what the tree was.
What was incredible though was the size of the dam and barrier! They didn't allow you to walk on top of it of course, which I don't love but at the same time I do understand it. That's a really long ways down, on either side lol to the water or to the pavement below. Someone would likely be an idiot there, but you know that sadly a few idiots ruin something for everyone else.
The trail winds down the side of the hill along the damn and it goes right back up the other side! Sadly we didn't have time to explore it this time around, but I know we will be back at some point, likely in the fall when the weather cools off and we can go for a nice walk as a family. The wife doesn't do well with these things at the moment, but she's on the mend and will hopefully be able to enjoy a jaunt with us in a few short months!
I found it incredible to just look at the sheer face of the dam wall here. It's long as hell, and also looks pretty damn cool! It's certainly withstood the test of time, and I hope that it stands for many hundreds or thousands of years into the future. There will likely need to be some restoration of it along the way here and there but for the most part, this thing looks solid as hell! I love looking alongside the wall straight across, the damn thing doesn't budge outward the whole length, that's crazy! I didn't realize it too much until going back and reviewing the photos here for the post, but that thing is straight as an arrow on the top layer of blocks.
There were a significant number of people walking out and about here, it was really a wonderful experience. Everyone was enjoying the whole scene, and even there were some people using it as a decent fitness opportunity which we know is sorely needed with a lot of people these days. That was a great thing to see! You can also get a bit of an appreciation of how big the whole thing is, I wonder if it's half a mile across or more, and it doesn't look to be too far off on that rough eyeball measurement!
At the bottom of it all there is this really cool gigantic water display. I think they send the high pressure water down the dam and up the pipe here, shooting it out for a nice and relaxing thing to look at. On a hot day I'm sure the mist that sprays out from this thing is really nice!
The little man and I were walking around this thing for about 45 minutes, exploring the various parts but we were sadly in a little bit of a hurry because we were trying to get out there and going fishing! Lol. We absolutely marveled at the wonder of modern construction with this thing, it was amazing to see as well as hear.
When you were on top of the dam and down on the bottom here, all you could hear was the low rumble of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every second flowing through the massive pipes and into the various pipes that make up the dam. I don't know if they also installed any type of electricity capture station but I'm assuming with such a large structure here, there has to be something of the sort. I will have to look that up for a future post but this place is definitely one we are going to come back to at some point in the year. We are going to try trout fishing here! One of the guys we talked to said that the trout fishing here was excellent and my son and I have been really looking forward to nailing a couple trout!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI.
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