Concrete people, that's who.

When Mike mentioned in our last Directors Meeting that the first Pilgrims Plunge tower foundation required 240 yards of concrete, only a few of us nodded our heads.

I don't pretend to know anything about construction.

So, Mike, what exactly is a "yard"?

We're all familiar with a backyard, a prison yard, a school yard, and Scotland Yard. There's a yard of fabric and a yard stick.

But for many yards of concrete going into a deep hole, you need one of these:

Two loaded cement mixers at a time transfer their goods into that crane-like contraption that forces the concrete 'way up and then down into a very precise place.

Like this:

Remember reading about "gruel" in Dickens novels? That's how I've always pictured gruel as looking. Thick and purple-y gray.

No doubt there were many more steps than this, but basically a very big hole was dug and supports added. Rebar, too, to make it pretty.

Let's step back a bit for a wider look.

Sorry, I don't recognize who that is, with all the winter garb. But he's steering the hose to the next spot.

I'm pretty sure this is Tom. In the background is the tower foundation that took 240 yards of concrete. The other two foundations are farther back.

Below is the "after" picture of the middle foundation, which took a mere 148 yards of concrete. Lisa has posted even more photos on our Facebook page.

So the answer to our initial question? I have several tidbits of information to present for your consideration:

A concrete truck holds nine yards of concrete.

A yard of concrete weighs approximately one ton.

That much concrete (240 yards) would fill half of the Otorongo splash pool.

Someone even calculated that's a total of 49,000 gallons.

Mrs. Koch wanted to know what that amounts to in tablespoons. We immediately knew it was time to move to the next agenda item.

John is working on our new park map. This is for the printed map you get here at the park, the one we offer for download on our website, plus it it will be utilized with our new HoliWatch system.

This was sitting on his desk yesterday...

I asked John if Santa was bringing him a new set of colored pencils for Christmas. Looks like he'll be wearing his current set down to the nubs coloring all these maps.

Here's a crop showing The Raven.

This is still in the "draft" stage, of course. We'll let you know when the final version is available.