look, the river!

Today was a bridgewalk day, and a number of photos were made. The streetlamps on the bridges have fluted metal columns that hum with their own special sound during wind and vehicular turbulence interaction.

Another broken Budweiser bottle encountered on the south-side walkway, bridge over St. Lucie River (Okeechobee Waterway). A number of bicyclists prefer to use the walkway rather than join the vehicular traffic (same as users of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA, although one side of that bridge was designated bikes-only).

Upon reaching Sewall's Point, entry to the north side of the bridge over the Indian River Lagoon also gave access to a walkway/vehicle lanes leading to the "western island", where a few picnic tables and some rusting grills signal some kind of rest stop. There, a police officer in a police cruiser was conducting surveillance of the traffic moving over that longer bridge. Within the lagoon shallows were observed some small fish schooling, and also a ray accompanied by a small billfish. Suddenly, a man began playing bagpipes near a parked small SUV and the police cruiser. How un-Floridian is that? Not quite a full-size island but rather an isle, photos taken of rusting metal objects on shore and in use on land were quickly made. The bases of the streetlamps were seen to be embedded in concrete that jut boxlike from the decks of the spans.

While returning to Stuart via the north sides of the two bridges, a 'missing person' poster was again seen as placed on a traffic-button pole during years past, showing a headshot of a young red-haired teen/woman -- whether she is still missing or not is not known. The return walk to the mainland encountered a large empty Timberline Cypress Mulch plastic bag, a piece of worn cardboard box with drops and dribbles of a brownish-red substance on it, a 'Miss Vickie's hand-picked jalapeno pepper' potato-chip bag, more brown Budweiser bottle fragments, a 'Trim Rite Auto Trim and Accessories' business card, a shattered/flattened cheap clear-plastic party cup, and half-part of a white styrofoam grocery tray. In the deck roadway at the end of the bridge where it connects with St. Lucie Boulevard and SE Ocean Boulevard, a lone and worn black rubberoid-handled screwdriver lay in the bike lane, together with a short length of rusted metal picture-wire. A single penny also lay on the walkway over the river.

The penny remained where it lay, while the other items were gathered up (as if there especially for me) in the mulch bag and were deposited in a dumpster near the Kingswood condo complex entry/exitway. Crows flocked near the lagoon, and perched on the streetlamps.