I’m back.

Hey friends.  I’m back.  I had a wonderful time and took pictures for you.  I was in Cappadocia for a bit, where they have the good sense to draw the dams in their guides to the region.

A trifle misleading, since it might almost be a sketch of an arch dam.

This cuts down on the number of times they have to tell tourists where to find local dams. Sadly, when we got there, it was an earthen dam, which is a good honest dam but perhaps not so glamorous. Not much in the way of Art Deco angels, if you catch my drift.

Pretty basic. Water way down; maybe that's normal for October.

The PLF would have liked it, though, because if there was a hint of downstream flow or water releases for fish, I didn’t see it. No gates, no temperature control device, nothing but a big empty spillway that I climbed out onto. When am I going to get another chance to climb a spillway? It formed a rather pretty lake, except for the bathtub ring, but isn’t that always the way?

Looks like the American west. Maybe all irrigated lands look the same.

I didn’t see canals, although they must have been there. I saw the most basic of earthen ditches. I assumed they were drainage, but could be wrong. But they were irrigating fields kilometers miles from the dam, so they must have been moving water somehow. Saw a lot of pipe

Modern house, with pipe.

, and some sprinklers.

Alfalfa? Can't tell. Spacing is uneven, by modern standards. They could get efficiency gains from spacing improvements.

If they were running furrows, they were doing it on some crazy steep slopes. But irrigation was mostly done, so I didn’t see how it works for them.


Overall, it looked basic, like 60’s era dams and irrigation systems. Considering how parched the landscape was, I’m sure all those little dams brought a lot of wealth to the region. I’d worry more about the environmental damage if the landscape hadn’t looked so thoroughly managed. Every last tree we saw was useful: apples, walnuts, cherries, apricots, poplars (for wood). Any green plant was a grapevine, rose, asparagus or gourd. One thing that was pretty cool was that the ag storage seemed to be warehoused in the rock itself.


How incredibly useful to have storage problems solved.

There was other stuff, but On the Public Record didn’t achieve all this fame and fortune by diversifying. OtPR lives to serve a narrow niche, and puts extraneous exotica below the fold.

An old village, with apricot trees.

Church in rocks.

A nice lady.

Dramatic rocks.


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5 responses to “I’m back.

  1. TChris

    I couldn’t see the pretty pictures. What’s wrong with me…

  2. The modern house also has rooftop solar water heaters.

    And that is some seriously hot gourd action.

    Welcome back OTPR!

  3. TChris

    Oooh, pretty pics, now I can see them…

  4. ScottB

    I bet that old village with the apricot trees is abandoned. Why? Because every year the squirrels eat every apricot before it gets ripe. Ask me how I know. :^(

    Welcome back!

  5. Hey,
    I have a whole new vision of things.