Tag Archives: bridge

Gorge Creek

The North Cascades Highway crosses a bridge at Gorge Creek. We had stopped to go to a lookout point on the lake side of the highway and the trail to this point ran alongside the creek. As we headed back, I wanted to take a quick look from the bridge. I walked out a short distance and could see the creek below. I almost turned back at this point but, fortunately, I kept walking a bit further and suddenly a waterfall came into view. I could easily have missed it. Indeed, Nancy almost didn’t come out when I told her to come and have a look as she similarly thought she had seen all there was.

The falls were slightly tricky to photograph. The top section of the falls was the first to be seen as you walked out on to the bridge. The bottom section was obscured. As you walked out further, the bottom came in to view but the top started to become obscured. Getting the full scale of the falls in one shot is not really possible. While you are there, you appreciate it of course but it is not so easy to portray to someone remotely. With the shadow of the gorge as well, getting a shot meant dealing with a wide dynamic range. This would have been a good time to try a pano in HDR. The latest version of Lightroom has that functionality automated but it hadn’t come out when I was there and, to be honest, I couldn’t be bothered trying it!

The Bridge Over Deception Pass

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Before we knew we were moving to the Pacific Northwest, we took a vacation up here. Ironically, we did it because it was relatively close and we thought the next move might take us away. Guess we got that one wrong. On that trip we jumped between the islands a little and part of that involved driving up Whidbey Island and crossing Deception Pass. Consequently, this post exists which describes my brief exploration of the bridge as we were passing over it in weather that was a little less than great.

Our recent visit to the Deception Pass State Park allowed us to walk along the beach and up towards the bridge. This was a different perspective to the previous visit. The shoreline is quite long and, for a while the bridge does not look that impressive as you are seeing it from quite a distance. However, as you get closer and start to make out the traffic on the bridge, you get to appreciate how large it is and how high over the water.

Since it is actually two bridges, it lends itself to a panoramic format when you are looking from a distance. It is only as you get closer to the bridge that you can start to compress the whole thing into something that fits the normal frame a little better. This was the third leg of a day trip so I was beginning to get a little worn out so I didn’t go and explore all of the possible angles. I will definitely be back and will try that another time but, given that I still had to walk back to the car, I decided I would save that for another day and focus on the trip home.

Rusty Discoloration

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The Riverwalk along the Chicago River takes you under the bridges. Each bridge is on a cycle for refurbishment so, while they are repainted regularly, they do progressively show signs of weathering. Some of them are rather old structures with the iron and riveting being something of a period long gone. I stopped for a while to look at the different colors that the gentle corrosion created. Nothing too drastic but an interesting contrast with the original paint color.

Bridge Perspectives

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Walking under the bridges along the Riverwalk in Chicago provides a very different perspective that that which you get from above. Some of the bridges have solid deck and others have gridded metal decks which allow light through (and anything else someone might drop). The lattice structures under the deck are ornate yet grubby. They are obscured from most views and get covered in the grime that washes down from above. I am not making this sound very appealing but I find them very cool to look at. The noise of the traffic above is there but slightly isolated which adds to the atmosphere for me. They do put a curved stainless-steel cover over the walkway itself so you are not vulnerable to anything from above ending up on your head which is something I am grateful for.

I-90 Floating Bridge

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I-90 crosses Lake Washington on a floating bridge. I have driven over it countless times. It crosses from Seattle to Mercer Island which the freeway then crosses before continuing on to the east side. I was on that side of the plane when taking off from SeaTac and got a great view of the bridge. The dead straight floating section and the transition to land looked very interesting from above. The road actually goes through a tunnel on Mercer Island in a long curve which, when I imagined its path, only added to the geometry of the whole.

Trestle Out of Use

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The east side of Lake Washington used to have a lot more train traffic. A line ran up that side of the lake but the railroad closed it down and then the interstate was rebuilt and went over the previous right of way. In Bellevue, the tracks crossed a valley on a large trestle bridge, the Wilburton Trestle. This wooden structure was modified at some point to allow an expansion of the road that ran underneath it but, once the railroad was closed, it fell out of use.

For the longest time, I didn’t even notice it. While it is close to the interstate, it is off to one side at a time when you don’t have much time to look around. When I finally noticed it, I was amazed I had driven by so many times. Even then, I never got a chance to take pictures. I was hoping for better weather but winter has not really helped in that regard so, one afternoon, as I was heading back from Bellevue, I stopped off to check it out.

Wooden trestle structures are a curious thing and very typical of old American railroads. The dull light may not have helped emphasis the structure much but it does reduce the contrast you can get with something so sheltered underneath. Even so I used HDR a bit to help manage the exposure range. Supposedly, the future for the trestle will be as part of the expanding trail network for the eastside. It is suggested that it will reopen to trail users by 2020. I think I shall ride down to it at that point to check the view out. I imagine it is pretty good from up there.

Bridge at Hecata Head

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Highway 101 passes Hecata Head and crosses a river before entering a tunnel through the cliffs. The bridge is a pretty elegant structure. Unfortunately, winter is not a good time to try and photograph it. It is tucked in amongst the hills and the sun will only be on it when in the west and probably only in the middle of summer when it gets a lot further north. I had to work with what we had in the shade. Playing around with exposures and working with some HDR processing did allow me to bring a bit more punch to the shots which I felt represented more of what I actually saw while I was there.

Bridge of Glass

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After our lunch in Tacoma, we took a quick stroll around the area before heading home. There is a glass museum which looks like something that will be a source for another day trip. To get to the museum, we walked across a bridge of glass. There were glass sculptures at one end of the bridge and, on the bridge itself, there was a roof structure that incorporated multiple glass pieces.

Mounting the glass in the roof meant that light could be let in from above and the glass was illuminated from behind. As the daylight was drawing to a close, this meant that some nice soft light was filtering through the colors giving a great effect. We were spot on with our timing. When we walked back, the light was gone.

Index Road Bridge

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I mentioned the bridge in Index in a previous post and I thought it deserved its own post. The bridge is relatively new having been built in the late 1990s. The road to the town in on one side of the river and the town is on the other so the bridge is pretty important! There is a rail bridge too, but the road is the way for most people since the trains don’t stop anymore.

It is an arch structure. The roadbed is suspended from the arch by a selection of cables. These come down in pairs from the arch and into the bed of the bridge. The structure is steel and, whether it was assembled on site or elsewhere, you can clearly see how the sections were assembled with the bolts through plates at each of the joints.

The arch shape is attractive and the symmetry of the bridge when viewed from the end is also very nice. Because the area is not too busy, they have not cluttered things up with too much fencing to segregate the pedestrians from the traffic so the whole thing has a simple look to it. A nice job by some engineers!

Hwy 99 Crosses the Water

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To get from Seattle to Fremont, you have to cross the water. Highway 99 runs across a high bridge to get from one side to the other. Being underneath the bridge you have a very different perspective on things. It is an old bridge structure with concrete piers supporting the roadway. From underneath, the symmetry of the structure is quite appealing. What is apparent when you are there but is not so clear in a picture is the steepness of the hill as it drops away down to the water. The gradient is pretty dramatic. The bridge does climb a bit but the ground falls away far faster.