The Winding River Project

[frostwolf]

Merry christmas, Fred. Looking forward to your next entry; want to see what would chase the Sergeant out of the army. Don't worry too much about the grow thing; I forgot that you were writing in the '60s.

[mrbisonm]

We are on vacation right now, enjoying beautiful beaches and warm waters. I will be back sometime next week.

Meanwhile have yourself a Wonderful and Happy New Years with everything you can wish for.

Have fun!


Fred

[CabraBuitre]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I still can't get over the detail of the construction sites... and everything else!  Keep up the good work!

[mightygoose]

happy new year fred.

[danielcote]

Nice Updates, I see the city is coming along nicely! Happy New year.

[mrbisonm]

I'm back, sorry it took so long. I had some busy holiday days and time to spend with my family, then we took a small vacation in the south, having had a great time.
So let's go on with the Winding River story, shall we?
I present the first part of the Access Road visit today.


Update 65

Down the Roads/Streets...Chapter 3A - Access Road Part I

                   Monday, October 24th, 1966
                           Today at this date... then:
                            -  1945 – Founding of the United Nations
                            -  1946 – A camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the
                                first photograph of earth from outer space
                            -  2003 – Concorde makes its last commercial flight.
                           

««" Good morning everyone," John Gabber said while coming down the stairs on this Monday morning passing by his youngest daughter Melody-Ann, " get dressed young lady, we're leaving in 10 minutes".
"What do you mean get dressed, Pa? I am dressed, all I need is to put on my coat." John stopped , turned around and took a real good look at his daughter who was dressed in a very short miniskirt, thin material almost see through blouse, yellow boots and a white ribbon in her blond long hair and he shook his head.
"No, this is definitively not dressed, young lady," he replied after a few seconds.
Melody-Ann is now 17 years old, going to the Lakefield Senior college studying medical education and flying with Dad every monday morning to the Capitol City and to come back friday nights with the train. She hates it when Dad calls her young Lady everytime he addresses her and this morning it was once too many. Looking at her mother Mary with a total disappointed and unpatient face, Melody-Ann said: " And I thought you had Dad under control, as you always say."
That indeed caught John's attention and he looked at his wife Mary, making a face as if the moon just fell from the sky. "Before you say anything John," Mary said before he could even open his mouth to comment on that remark, " our so called *little Lady* is 17 years old now, don't forget that and we live in 1966 and not in 1936 with your strange looking pants when we met. Today we have the Beatles, colour TV with 4 channels, everyone has a personal freezer and a motorized lawnmower, Montreal has a metro and the US has two lunar orbiters up there in space and all the girls wear miniskirts with boots and white ribbons in their hair today. Just look around, John. " 
John still shocked that his wife said to his daughter that she had control over him, couldn't say a logical comment on this at the moment, but said:
" Beatles,.....ha, those longhaired no good singing monkeys? Is that an example of modern times to you?, Well, not to me. A young lady should dress properly when she attends school and that's the way it is since school exists."
"Should dressed properly you say, right, well.....you better start doing that too before you talk about it the next time," Mary looks at John with both hands on her hips annalysing his greyish loose pants from the fities and the colar pullover. "If you call that *dressed properly* then Melody is far better than you.....and that's it!" repeating his earlier quotation," Now call Paul to get the plane ready, before you bring our daughter too late to school again." Mary turned her back on John and walked away»»
After a moment of silence, sitting down at the kitchen counter to take a few sips of his coffee, John just mumbled something no one really understood and which didn't seem to be important anyways. He called up Paul Flemming, the Company's pilot, and told him to start the engines in 15 minutes, approximately the time it usually takes to get to the Bluebay small airport from his home. Melody put on her plastic-like yellow coat, which was a little longer than her skirt and which calmed off John a bit, then both left for the airport in Bluebay to take the Company's jet and head towards Lakefield. John will be in his office all gay and Melody will start another week at the college. No words were exchanged between John and Melody during the 35 minute flight.

65.01


Tomorrow John will be 59 years old, only one year to sixty, something that scares him enormously. His father Henry just turned 82 years and his oldest son John Jr, which is working for the Gabber Inc with his uncle Gary is already 27 years old. Time flies by, he thinks so often, remembering the times when he had more free time to be with his family. Maybe he would have realized that times have changed indeed and skirts are nowadays shorter than when he was young. Something he was checking out in the downtown area for sure.

Ok, now let's get back to the third part of the Roads and Streets chapters. Today we will ride along the Access Road, which is the longest road in the Winding River Region sofar.
We all remember that before the region was invaded by the highway that brought along the civilization of the region, and that the only access to it was by the newly built *Access Road*, which starts in Sandom, enters the region in Grasslake and takes a sharp turn north in what is today downtown Access Center. There it partially becomes part of the Mainstreet and then the Valmore street until the Valmore lake where it is again called the Access Road. This road was built to get a shorter access to the highway for its construction back in the early fifties and it follows now the route 35 all through the whole region. From Access Center it heads north to Phlox, going through Valmore and West River. In Phlox it again makes a sharp turn, this time towards the east, heading over the mighty River into the Sterling and Stoke counties. The road ends today on the Ganoga island, where about the highway ends also and is still under continuous construction. We will visit this road from A to Z today, making it hopefully a good and interesting update to the Roads/Streets chapters.
65.02


First Grasslake County, entering the county with farms before reaching the small village of Grasslake. At the left we have the southern most point of the Grasslake, where Guy Racsan lives somwhere in between those treerich beaches. We can also see some constructions going on, meaning that there's still room for more of those called week-end homes. Slowly these are being transformed into regular homes though through the years.

65.03


The village was formed about 8 years ago, when people started bying land around the beautiful lake to build their weekend homes and fishing camps first. Then the village was only active during the warm summermonths, but since more and more people stayed all year around, the village began to live even through the wintermonths. And eversince then, the tiny county town is asking for municipal-political independance. Right now Grasslake is still under decisional control of Access Center (governed by its townhall) and the Lakefield County Administration District, which still has the power to rule over the whole region, including Access Center.

65.04


This is it, the so called "downtown" of Grasslake or Grasstown as some call it these days. It has a small church,  a regional office, an "allstore" outlet, a small gasstation and some small shops that villages usually have. But it has also the freshest and best tasting red tomatoes in the whole region, as a matter of fact, it is the only red tomato growing greenhouse producer in the region...

65.05


Further north while traveling the Access Rd, we enter the Grasslake northern lakepart. Here too the weekend homes have invaded the beaches and more and more are being built. Farmers that own most of the land touching the Winding River are starting to sell their land in pieces for other weekend homes. Now even the Mighty river banks will be invaded. This is a more of a *risk* area, since seasonal flooding of the mighty River is possible.
In this part of the Grasslake, a small creek called Shortcreek is the discharge of the lake, where it empties lake into the big river.

65.06


Like I said, houses are being built here in almost every part of the lake and nice houses they are too, since only families with a fairly good revenue can allow themselves to buy the expensive lots in the area. Well, it is the sixties, every one is dreaming to own a second home and good financial family situations are most common.

65.07


Some nice looking homes, some are seasonable and others are lived in year 'round by retired folks. Some places, like the picture shows below, some homes are almost closely stacked side by side not leaving much room for a bigger lawn. But these "hotspots" so called are rare on the lakeside, mostly because here you have the best view of the whole lake, being somehow situated on small ideal located peninsulas.

65.08


Somewhere in the middle of the Access Road in Grasslake North, just about where the road turns sharply to the west towards Access Center, lies the Osborne brother's farm, right in the turn of the road. We have talked about it awhile ago. Here our Johnny B.Badd has his mari-plantations, near the river on the Osborne's land. Both brothers had some financial problems ever since they bought the land from their father some 5 years ago and with the "green gold" as they call it, it helps paying off the debts. The Osbornes are growing larger fruits trees, which take time to be harvested.

65.09


Traveling again into another county, here is the first part of Access Center called Grassbay by most. It is here that Guy Racsan's father Tony has has mansion on a huge piece of land. He owns most of Grassbay's  lake surrounding land, plus some 1000 acres of the hills and forests surrounding the grasslake. Tony Racsan's land is in one piece and therefore totally cut off public access by a locked gate with a guardian on the Access Rd.
Again some farms are part of this area.

65.10


A little further up loggers are keeping themselves busy unrespectively cutting down the forest of rich and mature firtrees to the ground, leaving nothing else than dead trees, stumbs and branches behind. The wood and lumber being at its most expensive price right now is the best way to make a good living these days. Both Access Road sides are being stacked with ready to transport lumber. Usually it is transported to the Slye Mill in Phlox, but also some go south to Sandom and even Bluebay, where from there it is exported by ships in the harbour.
Some of the newly denuded land will serve as agricultural fields which also are in high demand in the Winding River Region at this time. This part of the Access Road is still on gravel. It should be asphalted once the heavy logging will stop, that is what the Lakefield Administration Office mentioned.

65.11


From here on I will leave a small gap and jump over directly to another citytile, knowing that not much interesting is inbetween the Racsan Mansion and Access Center town's beginning. It is mostly forests anyway, interupted here and there with a small common looking farm.
Back on the road we close in to the town of Access Center and first we have more heavily cultivated lands occupied by farms of all sorts. Surprisingly some forests are still standing in this area, being mostly on private-owned land.

65.12


Not far away from above we have where the farms meet the town. This is the east part of town that we have rarely talked about or even seen. It is mostly residential and quite new, since constructions started here only in the very late fifties. We even have one or two farms here that are totally surrounded by homes and which happened only in the last year. The barn's owners sold all of their livestock, having no more pastures and fields to feed them with. They both probably made a lot of money anyways by selling the lots for residential uses.

65.13


It is here that the Access Road becomes temporarily Mainstreet of Access Center. Other farmers like the one we see on the bottom right of below's picture, are still busy with agriculture, having their fields somewhere not far out of town, but mostly fruit or vegetable farms.

65.14


Again, here like in most places close to downtown of Access, new homes are being build and empty lots are being filled with time. Residential terrains are in very high demand in the Access area and prices have been climbing enormously in the last years. You have to have a big pile of § to be able to buy a small lot of residential zoning near the downtown area, almost impossible for a regular family to do so.
This has never been seen before in all Simland. Land prices here nearby the town are like 150 % higher that in the Capitol City of Lakefield, where the most expensive lots used to be.

65.15


To finish Part 1 of this update, we end it with a picture of the intersection of Mainstreet and Valmore Street, both formerly known as Access Road. It is here again that the road will make a sharp turn northward to enter Valmore and head directly to the Phlox county. Mainstreet continues straight to the highway, which is one of the streets we have visited in an earlier update of this series. Not much of explanation is necessary for this picture since we know the downtown part quite well. Gabber Park is still under construction as we can see below.

65.16


The next time we will visit the rest of the Access Road, Part 2, we drive past the Valmore Lake, the museum and by the Donovan Enterprises, Robert Sweather's home, the newly detoured West River and the army base, then into Phlox and its small town and over the large bridge, over the Sterling island and eastward, passing by the Willow Ponds towards the Ganoga Marshlands where the highway team is about to build the longest bridge yet under Alex Puto's supervision. That will be the second and last part of this visit. After that, we will return to regular news about some our characters again, including some of the developments of a cleaner town and the airport.


Remember you can visually follow the trail of the Access Road on a bigger and more detailed picture on the link below:

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2638/1965windingrivervalleyn.png


Fred

EDIT: Just about when I finished uploading this update, my Antivirus panicked, telling me with dozens of pop-ups that it will end its function within the next three days and that I needed to renew it......lol.....That damn AVAST Antivirus jammed my computer completely. Now I can't do anything without waiting like 1 to 2 minutes for a program to open and work about only at 25% speed and efficacity. This is ridiculously stupid.
Now I have to reinstall windows and everything else.
I am just pissed off at computers, internet, programs that never work troublefree and people who are too stupid to create something that really works like it is supposed to be and those who create programs and viruses that cause all these f***ups at the moment. What has this world come to?
It will take a week or two before I will be able to continue. I have to re-install everything, including windows and I have to find someone to do this for me. Sorry for the delay and hopefully you enjoyed this update the same.
Luckily I am able to save everything that I have on my computer, because most of the back-ups are on my second and third hard-drive. C U then...... (...and don't worry, I'll survive and won't kill anyone meantime...)

[Cyclone1001]

Nice update, and I'm sorry about your problem. Hopefully everything will be alright.

[sumwonyuno]

First off, even though your computer situation is such an obstacle, at least you have backups.   

Anyways, I am amazed at your work.  I really like the coastline and the nearby development.   

[danielcote]

The town grows bigger again.  yet it seems to have lost that homey feel

[Terring7]

For as long as you back up your work, no need to worry. The town looks interesting. Some pictures reminds me some landscapes i watch on television when i was a kid. Beautiful memories

Please keep going

[Badsim]

Well Fred , I know and enjoy your work since so many years ... that I don't why I didn't comment so far . That's a shame ... your MD/CJ is one of the best running ..... I'm too maniac with details , your approach is surely more reasonable , at least surely as striking than mine . There's not so many valuable ways to consider that game ...

Belated congratulations for that grandness all around .



Cédric.

[mightygoose]

love the new update, glad you enjoyed your holiday season, sorry to hear about the computer issue, personally i do my own antivirusing, as software is often a painful burden on memory and clock cycles. i wait with baited breath for the enxt installment.

[threestooges]

Sorry to hear about the anti virus issue, but the update looked pretty good. you have a nice touch for detailed flora work and it looks like things are booming everywhere around the region. Looking forward to the next update.
-Matt

[mrbisonm]

Cyclone1001, don't worry, I haven't lost a thing.
sumwonyuno, thanks, but I think you mean the riverbanks or beaches as I have no coast in this region, or are referring to Bluebay (the update before?)
danielcote, well, we aren't really seeing that feely home part of the town in the last updates, but we'll get to this later.
Terring7, funny, me too I have seen parts of that region before, but irl, probably in NZ, only there landscapes could like this.
Badsim, well thank youuu. Nice to see you here, now that you broke the ice I hope to see you more often....lol
mightygoose, doing my own antivirusing I wish I could do also, but computer knowledge to me is verrrrrry limited.
threestooges, thanks, yes, the region is getting slowly invaded.

Thanks everyone. Although I have some severe problems with my *gaming 'puter*, I have, as mentioned before, everything safe on my D: Drive. I do my "back-ups" every sunday evening ever since I have lost everything a year ago. In other words, I have almost everyfile on my gaming computer on the C:/Drive as a double on the D:/Drive. Good grief, am I glad I did this.
Now I am waiting for my oldest son to come by and does some formatting and re-install windows. Probably in a week or so, since he lives some 150 kms from us now (Montreal). Meanwhile though, I will use up all the pictures that I have done before. I transferred them to my laptop and make at least another update later this week.
Today I only have a "Teaser" for you, especially for those who like details.....

This is the end of the Access Road, the very end, right here where they are preparing to build the longest bridge ever in the Winding River Region. Alex Puto says that it will take almost 2 years to build with a cost of almost 1 million § and cover two of the Ganoga Marshland's outlets. The preparation has started 2 months ago and soon the first pillars will rise in the river, while the main "bridgeteam" has not yet arrived. They're still finishing the two Winding River bridges in Phlox
I know, it is the end of the Access Road and there's still two more updates to do to reach this, but like I said, I will use up the pictures that I have while waiting for the computer to get fixed.
Enjoy and very thanks for the comments, which are always much appreciated.

Fred

Ps: Coming up later this week: The continuity of the Access Road update from Valmore to Phlox.(Update 66)

[NASCAR_Guy]

We need an entire MD devoted to Bluebay and Lakested.

[mrbisonm]

We need an entire MD devoted to Bluebay and Lakested.

Whoa!....lol.... Now you scared the heck out of me to show you any more pictures from Frampton, Beecherfalls, Sandom, Bergen, Reverant and Meadow, all regions that take part of this MD....Oh, I forgot, there's also Buff Mountains which is also from the Lakestead townships, we haven't seen that one yet, did we?

[scott1964]

  Nice map. 

[frostwolf]

Been a bit since I've ben on; this looks great. You have certainly captured the problems of urban sprawl.

Just out of curiousity, since we've seen the map before, what does Winding River look like right now from the air? I'm just wondering how much "wilderness" is left.

-FW

[soulchaser]

Lookin' great Mr. B. Nice Update. I like your natural settings.
Sad to hear you're up to a lot of work with your PC.
I can feel with you. It's been a while since my whole Plugin-Folder got messed up while problems with the Startup Manager...I decided to start from (almost) 0 again

[mrbisonm]

Thanks scott1964, the map exists since the beginning of this MD.
soulchaser, don't worry, this is only my gaming computer, nothing on there than games, anti-virus and windows. It won't be long to get everything back on it. Every saved game, download or tool has been kept as a back-up safely on its D:/ Drive.

Just out of curiousity, since we've seen the map before, what does Winding River look like right now from the air? I'm just wondering how much "wilderness" is left.

I guess that there is still a long way to go, before we can say the wilderness is getting rare. Percentage wise I would say that only about 10 to 15 of the region is build over at the moment.
The whole "Ganoga Wilderness" (the right half of the map) is not yet explored at all, so are the lands surrounding it, maybe hiding some mysteries or treasures yet. I know that some folks from the Simland government have been sent to some of the areas to find out and probe the riches of the soils, such as coal, which is very in demand right now, oil, which is also searched for and then all the other precious or semi-precious products that the earth may contain or have produced. But that is still to find out.
It is the job of our bushpilot Steve Gibson to bring these specialists to the right places and get them out after, and it seems that he is more and more busier with that.
Here is the latest entire map of the region, which was made in July/1965. It is very detailed and large. Warning: it may take awhile to open, since it is a png image and big.
Enjoy

Fred


http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2638/1965windingrivervalleyn.png