Scenic Views of the City

Well...the verdict is in: today is going to be a HOT, HAZY, HUMID day in the 'burg...might have to find a pool and spend some time catching some rays! Mike and I have quickly realized that we're NOT in the Land of 10,000 Lakes anymore :(  Lakes and beaches are hard to come by here, I've even seen webpages for some "commercial" pay-to-use beaches in the area, who knew!  We do live just blocks from the Susquehanna River which is gorgeous!  We've noticed plenty of pontoon and jet ski traffic on the river during the weekends.

We've spent a lot of time exploring the city by walking along the river on the Capital Area Greenbelt...sounds like there are 20+ miles of trail surrounding the city that we'll have to check out--for now, we've only seen about 4 miles worth.  The photo below is of the M Harvey Taylor Bridge near our house; we've crossed this bridge a number of times on our runs and walks--the bridge itself is over 0.8 miles in length and sometimes feels never-ending when crossing by foot!

Looking East @ the M Harvey Taylor Bridge from the Greenbelt

View of City Island from the East Shore

PA state capitol...looking east on State Street

Architecture on State Street

There are unique buildings everywhere we look!

Meet the Walnut Street Bridge (a.k.a Old Shaky).  Really, a bridge named Old Shaky!?! I had to do a little further research this morning to figure out the story behind it's name.  Apparently the bridge was built in 1890 to "break the toll monopoly" held by the neighboring Market Street Bridge.  Long story short, it was closed to motor vehicle traffic in 1972 and has since been used to serve pedestrian and bike access to City Island.

The bridge is gorgeous, although I'm still trying to get used to walking across the wrought iron grated bridge deck (especially in my Tom's...makes me feel like my feet are going to fall through to the water below)! You can't walk across the entire river on this bridge; in 1996 record snowfall, ice, and flooding led to the ultimate collapse of 3 spans between City Island and the West Shore, see photo below taken from the web.  There's some pretty neat information, photos, old advertisements, and blueprints about the bridge history here from historicbridges.org if you're interested.

Old Shaky view from City Island

2,801 feet from East Shore to City Island

Only photo I could find of the collapsed portion

Well...I think that's it for now, off to do something semi-productive with my morning and the rest of my day! FYI...I resized the photos on my earlier posts so they might be a little easier to see.  More stuff to come soon, have a fabulous day :)