Thursday, July 03, 2003

My son & I took a swing by the wind farm between Cobb & Montfort, Wisconsin on our way down to my home in the Chicago area. The turbines are located immediately South of the roadway off U.S. highway 18, and there is a wide gravel shoulder, so it's very easy to pull over and snap a few photos, and watch the turbines run for awhile. The things are huge, true giants. They must stand nearly three hundred feet tall from ground to fully rotated-up turbine blade tip. The towers and nacelles must be two hundred feet or so. What amazed my son & I both, was how utterly quiet it was there. There wasn't much wind, and only a few turbines had de-feathered their prop and started spinning, but the ones that were you couldn't hear at all. The only sound I heard was the vehicles passing by on the two lane highway. To me, the turbines were a beautiful sight, adding to the scenery. At some point I'll have pictures, but I'm using 35mm and need to finsh the roll, get it developed, and scan the pics. If I were the farmer across the street, I'd be opening up a tourist stop with a restaurant, viewing tower, camera sales, posters, etc. That extra wide shoulder must be on that stretch of road for a reason, and wind farms often bring tourists from the surrounding region...

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