Your weekly field guide to Littleton, Ken Caryl, and the SW Denver foothills

Happy Friday. Tonight a drone show opens Western Welcome Week over Sterne Park, tomorrow you can pan for gold, and Sunday offers two separate routes to pancakes. That's the fun half. The other half of this issue is the answer to the bear question half the neighborhood has been asking, the on-the-record ending to the Simms and Ken Caryl saga, and a moose with impeccable timing. The heat is sticking around all weekend, so front-load the fun. Start with the bear.

Eighty-eight of you answered the reader survey in its first few days, so here's your receipt. Nearly half of you have walked into a local business because you read about it here, which is the whole reason those businesses keep this newsletter free. And the thing you want more of, by a wide margin, is restaurant and opening news. Message received. There's a brand-new restaurant find in this issue, pulled out of county paperwork before anyone announced a thing, plus a real update on the steakhouse nobody else has reported. The top slot itself is open for a local business, so if you know one that belongs here, forward them this issue.

The bear story took a turn, and the numbers behind it explain the whole strange summer. For the last week and a half, neighbors' Ring cameras have been catching bears, from the Meadows golf course side of the zip over to Grant Ranch and Governor's Ranch, and a reader kept me supplied with the reports. I put the questions to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and Kara Van Hoose, the agency's northeast region spokesperson, answered all of them. The hard part first: CPW officers attempted to relocate a bear from the area on July 29, and the bear died during transport. The agency doesn't know why. It could have been a reaction to the sedative or the extreme heat, and CPW was candid that every relocation carries that risk. Van Hoose believes it was the same bear readers had reported at Sunset Park. And no, that wasn't the only one out there. There are multiple bears working the Littleton area right now, and the count says this year is genuinely different: as of Wednesday, CPW had taken 179 bear reports in Jefferson County this year, against 97 in the same window last year and 96 the year before. Nearly double, after two flat years. The cause, in the agency's telling, is drought and a lack of natural food, which is pushing bears into trash cans across the metro. You have more options than you'd think. Beyond the usual list, trash in late, bird feeders down, no pet food outside, CPW says residents can haze a bear off the property: yell, bang pots, hit the air horn or the car alarm, put up motion lights. It feels rude. It isn't. A bear that stays scared of people stays out of trouble.

Meanwhile, the Simms and Ken Caryl corner finally gets its ending, on the record this time. When I covered the mystery dig in July, the water district couldn't commit to a finish date. This week Lou Vullo, the Ken-Caryl Ranch Water and Sanitation District's manager, walked me through the whole tail end by phone. The emergency sewer repair itself wrapped weeks ago, the repaving finished at the end of July, and the last piece, striping, belongs to Jefferson County, which Vullo says scheduled it for Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week, done by today. I drove the corner Tuesday and traffic was already moving north to south on fresh, unpainted asphalt, and this morning the stripes were down. That corner is finally out of the news business. Everybody's commute wins.

Tonight, the 98th Western Welcome Week opens with a drone show. Sterne Park, 5 to 10, free, with The Petty Nicks Experience on the bill. If you'd rather eat your Friday, the Ranch runs Food Truck Friday from 5:30 to 8 at both the Ranch House and Dakota Lodge, non-residents welcome.

Tomorrow is a pick-your-adventure Saturday. Welcome Week's 30th annual free gold panning runs at Carson Nature Center, with Art in the Park at Bega Park and the kids' fishing derby at Geneva Lake. In Ken Caryl, Market Days brings vendors and bounce houses to the Ranch House picnic area at 10, and The Wedding Singer plays in the park at 7:45. The Pokémon GO crew is at Hudson Gardens for a hatch-day walk, 10:45 to noon.

Sunday starts with a 5K and ends with country. The Pancake Stampede starts at Hudson Gardens at 8, 15 to 25 dollars, and the classic Family Pancake Breakfast is on the Geneva Lodge lawn from 8 to 11. The Littleton Elks car show follows at the Elks Lodge, 10 to 2. Sunday evening, country star Chris Janson plays Hudson Gardens at a ticketed show, gates at 5.

Midweek picks: the Taste of Western Welcome Week runs Wednesday, 6 to 8:30 at Littleton Center, and Thursday brings a Perseids star party to Carson Nature Center, 8 to 10, timed to the year's best meteor shower. Also Thursday, Dr. Lunch closes out the Clement Park amphitheater season at 7, free, the last of ten.

Look ahead: the Grand Parade rolls through downtown next Saturday, August 15, 10 to 11:30, carrying a Colorful Colorado, 150 Years theme. And Sunday the 16th, Mountain Music Fest at Buchanan Park in Evergreen puts Kevin Bacon and his brother Michael on stage, noon to 9. It's a student-run festival, kids from area schools will have booths, and proceeds back student programs through the Wooden Hawk Foundation. Adults are 30 dollars at early pricing, kids 6 to 17 are 10 at the gate, 5 and under free.

The steady two: the farmers market, Saturdays 8 to 1 on Nevada Street, and Wednesday Raid Hour at the Clement Park skate park, 5:50.

You asked for restaurant news. The county permit office delivered. First: a tenant permit issued in July names a Jersey Mike's going into 7735 West Long Drive, about a mile east of Kipling, one zip over. The permit reads like a sub shop starter kit, two kitchen hoods and a brand-new grease trap. Second: The Summit Steak Bar, the steakhouse coming to the Bevy's building on Alkire that I flagged last week, now has a live website with hours, a dinner menu, and a working reservation page, and state filings trace it to an Indiana-based company. What it doesn't have is an announced opening date. I've asked, and I'll print it the moment there is one. And a small one for the Southwest Plaza watchers: July sign permits put Wells Fargo signage on the mall at 8500 West Bowles.

Black Bear Trail is open, officially. The county lifted the seasonal closure August 1, so Deer Creek Canyon and Hildebrand Ranch are one continuous ride again, with the standing catch that the Upper Plymouth Creek stretch still closes for trail work Monday through Thursday, 8 to 4:30. Friday through Sunday you get the full loop. Up the canyon at Lair o' the Bear, Bear Creek Trail runs the same rhythm, closed Monday through Thursday, 8:30 to 4:30, between the Kingfisher and Cold Springs bridges into late August, clear on weekends. The fire ban holds at Stage 2 in unincorporated Jeffco, same rules as all summer. With the weekend this hot, be off the rock by noon.

Ten days of Welcome Week, one designated driver. Event and Airport Transportation runs Sprinter vans that seat up to 11, built for concert nights and airport runs alike. Reserve at least an hour ahead at limolimo.limo. Local and licensed, Colorado PUC LL-03624.

Monday is your window to say something about the train. The Front Range passenger rail delivery plan gets its Littleton forum Monday, 5 to 7 at Buck Recreation Center, free. The district's board meets August 28, when the question of a November ballot measure is expected to come up for a vote, so Monday is the input that still counts.

Your HOA has a xeriscape playbook, and most residents have never seen it. If the brown lawn has you plotting a permanent exit, the Ken-Caryl Ranch Master Association publishes a Residential Landscaping Guidebook, with plant lists matched to the Valley and the Plains and three fully drawn xeric yard plans. It's real effort, and it's free on their site. One thing state law adds: associations have to keep at least three preapproved water-wise front-yard designs, and for most single-family homes, installing one is supposed to mean automatic approval. Whether the guidebook's plans are those preapproved designs is the one thing the guidebook doesn't say. I've asked the association, and I'll pass along the answer.

And the future Deer Creek Library wants your artwork. The library system is collecting marker drawings of Colorado nature, all ages, regular white paper, through September 27, to build a community art wall in the branch it's building on Bradford Road. Drop yours at the library site at 11100 Bradford, the Saturday bookmobile stop there, or the Columbine Library front desk.

The for-sale signs are multiplying. The discounts aren't. There are 187 homes on the market in 80127 right now, up from about 165 when I counted three weeks ago. What hasn't budged is pricing power. A four-bedroom on South Routt Way just closed 1 percent over its list price in a little over a month, while up in the Valley, a six-bedroom on Dawn Heath Circle went for 1.17 million, a modest 2 percent under ask, and a 4,500-square-foot place on South Field Way closed at exactly list. Sellers are showing up in bigger numbers and buyers are paying close to sticker anyway. If the shelf keeps growing into fall, that math gets interesting.

The forecast is one note, played loud, and Saturday turns it up. Friday 96, with wildfire smoke hazing the sky and an air quality action day for ozone and smoke running until 4 this afternoon. Saturday hits 99 under an official heat advisory from 11 to 8, and Sunday holds at 98. The payoff for all of it comes Monday, when the storm odds jump to nearly a coin flip at 96, and Tuesday keeps about a one-in-four chance at 95. Until then the drill stays the same: errands and exercise before ten, shade and water after.

A reader up Deer Creek Canyon, above Phillipsburg, spent a few days late last month sharing the neighborhood with a young bull moose. He camped in the creek, browsed the willows, posed for one great photo, and then the creek went dry and he moved on.

Denver Water's reservoirs are telling the same story from the other end of the pipe, 75 percent full at the end of July against a normal of about 96, with Antero Reservoir already empty. When even the moose gives up on the creek, you water your two days and make them count.

That's the week from the foothills. Go watch the drones tonight, save me a pancake on Sunday, and if a bear has been through your yard this summer, I want to hear that story.

Joey

Subscribe | Forward to a neighbor | Advertise with us