There are Giants Among Us

Don Quixote battled the windmill, thinking it was a ferocious giant.  If he would ever have the chance to visit the Beech Ridge Energy Project, I believe that he would either (a) drop further into insanity, or (b) be frightened out of it altogether.

The first stop of the latest geocaching trip was a visit to "Don Quixote's Nightmare," a cache located on Beech Ridge in Greenbrier County, West Virginia.  The cache itself was a lot of fun, being a multi-part, and having me read countless scraps of paper for the co-ordinates for part two, only to have dear brother (and the owner of this cache) to point out to me that the co-ordinates were written in plain sight.  Argh!

Hopping quickly out of the truck to get a good look at this giant, I was first impressed, obviously, by the sheer enormity of this wind generator.  Woodhick803 told me that the generator is about 390' in height at its tallest - that's more than a football field! 

Secondly, I was impressed by how quiet it was.  There was a slight whooshing sound, but nothing that was obnoxious.  More like white noise.

It was a little disconcerting, though, to look up at the blades and see the clouds moving.  Intellectually I knew that the generator was well-seated and stable, but with the clouds moving it gave all appearances to be falling.  Very eerie.



Each blade is approximately 100 feet long.  Here you can see a blade on the ground and more wind generators in the background.  There are 64 windmills here, making it a small wind farm.

Size matters!  Here I am standing in the part of the blade that would be attached at the hub.  I'm 5'4" and there's still room over my head.

Again, size matters!  As stated earlier, I'm 5'4" and there's at least that much of the blade above me, making this part at least 10' high.

This is the smallest part of the blade.

These blades were damaged somehow, probably in transportation.  I'm thankful that Invenergy has left them there on the ground so you can actually get some idea of the massiveness of these guys.

By the way, the wind farm is located on a county road so there is no problem getting up there to see them. 


This was definitely the highlight of the day.  I've been trying to think of the best superlative to describe them, but even "awesome" and "magnificent" don't seem to do these giants the justice they deserve.

To read more about the day, check out Woodhick803's blog:  http://cachingin--geocachingme.blogspot.com/

Get outside and play!