The Great Canal Clean Up Caper: The Historic High Line Canal, Aurora, CO

St.Patricks day has started of with a bang of fresh air! My two cub scouts and I headed out for the city of Aurora's Great Canal Clean Up Caper! It was a sort of last minute decision seeing that we could squeeze in a service project that would qualify my oldest for the World Conservation Award. Talk about last minute... he graduates from Cub Scouts into Boy Scouts on Tuesday! So while we had some ulterior motives, I think this even will become a yearly tradition. One that I hope will involve all the family. The boys and I had a great time and the worked hard the whole time. I am very proud of them. Most importantly they felt good about themselves and the work that was done to make the Historic Highline Canal in Aurora a much better place to walk and ride a bike through.
What impressed me most about this even was the amount of people that turned out. I was thankful for that. But putting aside that, what was most remarkable was the shear number of boy scouts, cub scouts and even a few girl scouts. Say what you want about the BSA. I know many have feelings about BSA policy regarding the gay community, but the city of Aurora's project would have been "up a creek" without them today. I would imagine that well beyond 50% of the volunteers and perhaps might I guess, even 80% were as a result of the BSA. That is why BSA has my loyalty. It promotes civic responsibility and I can guess that without it projects like this would be in serious jeopardy. This isn't the first time I have seen outcomes like this and I feel comfortable, assuming that the same amount of people wouldn't turn out if there were no BSA. I am not interested in debating what people don't like about BSA, but I just wish to pay respect the organization that helps me raise boys of good character. I like the "investment into their character." I will be a scouter for life because of it.

Enough with the Scout Commercial there. Lets get on to the adventure itself. Like I said, my boys were eager and racing to pick up every bit of trash they could get their hands on. The portion of the canal we worked on was just behind the Community College of Aurora and to the south of it for about 1 mile. And boy was there a lot of trash! Mr. J loved checking out all the prairie dogs. We admired plenty of birds, chirping their great support of our efforts. We identified some robins and of course some Canadian Geese.

We were lucky to find some scat and tracks of mule deer. And it was wonderful to see the "face lift" that came to the canal as the trash was removed. It made this stretch so enjoyable to view.
I love gnarly trees and many of them look so in their winter state.


To see the water ways clear out of debris. A restoration of sorts for the nature around. The large quantity of trash really made the place on the ugly side.

They were amazed at the types of trash they found. Even more amazed by the large quantity of plastic grocery bags littering the trees, shrubs and water ways. Mr. A made the connection. "I am so glad we always try and remember our reusable bags mom," he said.
A picnic area cleaned up and ready for people to enjoy.


Two tired boys, ready to call it a day.