Burkeville Covered Bridge, Conway, MA

Burkeville Covered Bridge

Lots of covered bridges cater to the tourist trade. Going up Route 10 in New Hampshire, I saw lots of signs directing passers-by to the covered bridges along the way, they even had them numbered. Suggested a bicycle tour of all six.

Not this bridge. The Burkeville Covered Bridge just sits placidly in a spot, guarding the placid South River that it crosses. You'd miss if you weren't looking for it, no signs that I saw indicating it existed, even the Google Map leads you to the wrong spot (close by, but still wrong). Crawl down one country road and then another and then another and there it is -- between a farmhouse and a church, next to a machine shop, closed to car traffic by an old mill stone but still welcoming the walker.

It just is.

Burkeville Covered Bridge interior (and my car!)

The Massachusetts Covered Bridge web site shows that back in 2003, at least, the bridge was in dire shape. A plaque inside the bridge claims the bridge was built in 1871 and restored in 2005. The site linked above says it was variously built in 1951 and 1970, replacing an earlier bridge. I kinda believe that this bridge is not the same one built in 1871 -- these wooden bridges just don't last that long. Best care in the world won't make that timber not weaken after decades of traffic.

3G Construction seems to specialize in the restoration of covered bridges, by the way. They did this one and also Coombs Bridge, which I'll probably post about next.

Portal to the bridge, note millstone

Conway's annual "Festival of the Hills" features a 10K run, "The Covered Bridge Classic", that starts here.

It's a nice little bridge. If you happen to be heading toward (or from) Vermont on I-91 passing through Massachusetts, and you have a spare hour or so, it might be worth seeing. The Eunice Williams Bridge is nearby, and there's another covered bridge not far from this one that I didn't have time to go to (looked like another hour of threading narrow country roads, and this was the day I was heading to New Hamster).

You can park where I parked, on the other side of the bridge. There's a little area to pull off. I'd suggest making this bridge part of a bicycle tour, if you happened to be bicycling through the Berkshires anyway.

The Haunted Eunice Williams Bridge, Greenfield, MA

Eunice Williams Bridge

It looks peaceful enough now -- a secluded spot by a water pumping station, a bridge crossing the placid Green River, a favorite fishing spot for the locals -- but this bridge has a history. And a ghost.

In the dark of leap day, 1704, a group of French and Indian raiders attacked the settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts in what has become known as the Deerfield Massacre. The raiders force-marched the settlers 300 miles to Canada. Anyone who couldn't keep up was instantly killed.

That was the fate of Eunice Williams, who, having just given birth hours before, collapsed as she tried to cross the river. She was instantly killed by a tomahawk to the back of her neck while her husband, John Williams, the reverend of the town, and their children watched. The family survived the trip to Canada and were eventually allowed to return to the States. Their daughter, also named Eunice, refused to return, though, and married into the tribe of Indians that had kidnapped them.

It is said that if you drive into the bridge on a moonless night, shut off your headlights and beep once on the horn, the ghost of Eunice Williams will appear and beg for the baby that was torn from her as she lay bleeding to death in the river. Follow those links to read more about this haunted bridge.

Eunice Williams Bridge

Though actually, this bridge isn't really that old. It was built in 1974, replacing an earlier bridge. If there'd been a bridge here back in 1704 when the Indians were forcing prisoners across the river, maybe Eunice Williams would have survived.

Last year's Hurricane Irene severely damaged the bridge, knocking it off its abutments and erasing much of the near bank. It was already closed to traffic and being pounded by a storm and a torrential, overflowing river did it no favors. The town of Greenfield decided to restore the bridge. It's been placed back on the abutments (the Google Maps "satellite" view currently shows the bridge in the river, off the abutments, by the way) and the road is being reconstructed.

The bridge is closed to both car and foot traffic, but someone (not me) has bent the fence back on the other side enough so that an enterprising tourist can crawl through it.

But if you do visit, do it during the day. When the night is dark and the moon is out of the sky, who knows what ghost a chance sound might summon?

The Last Voyage of the Enterprise (and the Gil Hodges/Marine Parkway Bridge, Brooklyn-Rockaway, NY)

The Enterprise passes beneath the raised Gil Hodges Bridge

I really don't like driving in New York City. I'd already been the day before to test drive a new car in New Jersey, and it would take a lot to get me to go to NYC twice in the same weekend.

A space shuttle being floated past one of the most beautiful bridges in a city known for its beautiful bridges? Yah, I guess that would do it.

A crowd gathered at Bennett Field to watch the shuttle sail by

The Enterprise never flew in space. It was the prototype space shuttle, and was dropped from great heights to study its aerodynamics and tune the shape for the production shuttles that followed. A letter writing campaign convinced NASA to name the shuttle for the famous starship, and most of the original cast members made it to the space plane's dedication.

The shuttle with the 500mm lens

I'd plotted out just exactly where I was going to park and where I was going to watch the shuttle -- park at the ranger station near the airfield, watch the shuttle from the Gil Hodges Bridge. I figured that would give me a nice perspective, and I could get the sea level view when it passed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge a couple hours later.

Well, traffic was awful. I was far from the only person to show up; the place was as crowded as a fireworks show, bemusing the fishermen who had set up poles on the beach, expecting to have the place to themselves. Not on shuttle season. Even the park rangers came to watch. Police and TV helicopters buzzed the shuttle on its slow journey into the bay.

Lots of people did watch from the bridge, but I elected to just sit on the beach and read a book, protected from the sun by an umbrella, until the shuttle showed. It was just a dot far in the distance, but I could see it clearly with the 500mm lens. I'd left my tripod in my car when it went into the shop. I had to use my Gorillapod mini-tripod grabbing onto my knee. Scrunched up on the beach, squinting into the camera on my knee, I took picture after picture as the shuttle approached.

Gil Hodges/Marine Parkway Bridge (sans shuttle)

The Gil Hodges Bridge, named for a famous baseball player with the Brooklyn Dodgers, connects Brooklyn with the Rockaways, a peninsula that juts out into the ocean. Brooklyn and Queens comprise the western tip of Long Island, which had me half wondering if it would be a good idea to just head through both boroughs to the Long Island Expressway and take the ferry across the sound to Bridgeport or New Haven. Rather than parking on the Van Wyck Expressway, which is what I ended up doing anyway.

When you leave Brooklyn, the sign says, "Fuggedaboudit!". Followed by a more sedate "Welcome to Queens", the more eastern borough clearly embarrassed by her brash husband (Brooklyn is in Kings County, Queens is in Queens County. Kings, Queens -- get it? Fuggedaboudit!).

If you'd like to visit the bridge, dammit, bring a bicycle. There were hundreds! The Flatbush bus stops right off the bridge, or you can park in the ranger's station down Aviation Road just before the bridge. I imagine, when there's no shuttles floating past, there's plenty of parking there. I didn't cross the bridge into Rockaway because it cost money and I didn't want to pay. Frickin' Bronx-Whitestone Bridge cost me $6.50 each way.

George Washington Bridge, Manhattan, NY - Fort Lee, NJ

George Washington Bridge from Fort Tryon Park

I had business in New Jersey this morning. I got lost, as usual, and didn't approach the George Washington Bridge the way I normally do -- where before I know it, I'm on the bridge, staring in wonder at the towering, um, towers and the massive cables. Instead, I'd gotten lost in Yonkers and ended up crossing the Henry Hudson Bridge (sorry, no pictures) into Manhattan and taking Route 9A down along the Hudson River and seeing, for the first time, the bridge from the side.

This picture, I took on the way back, when the sun was hidden by clouds. If there'd been a place to pull off the highway and take a shot of the bridge illuminated by the morning sun, just broken through storm clouds, I absolutely would have.

This bridge makes over a million dollars for the city of New York, every single day. They got my $12. And $8 for crossing the Henry Hudson Bridge twice. It's like they don't want you to come into Manhattan.

I paid my $12. I was going to look around. I headed down Broadway (yes, the Broadway) to 187th, took a left and a right, dodged some double parked cars and came to Fort Tryon Park. This beautiful riverside park is home to the flower & heather gardens, miles of bike and pedestrian walkways, open areas everywhere... and the Cloisters.

Cloisters @ Fort Tryon Park

I found lots of friends there; a family of woodchucks was showing off for the tourists, and birds were everywhere. I got this little guy looking very happy with himself about something.

Sparrow resting

He was one of a group, but I was using the 500mm lens and it was impossible to keep more than one in focus with the super shallow depth of field. They looked awful. Except this one.

George Washington Bridge from Fort Tryon Park

There is plenty of parking in Fort Tryon Park; park near the entrance to explore the Washington Heights/Inwood sections of Manhattan, park further down to walk among the gardens and forests, or keep going to the Cloisters and walk the grounds or take a tour through the museum.

If you want to cross the bridge without having to take your car, grab your bicycle or your walking shoes and head over, though you might want to start from the New Jersey side. Manhattan traffic is terrible. The pedestrian/bicycle walkway was filled with people on two wheels or two feet. It truly is an experience.

The Bridges of Portsmouth, NH

General Sullivan Bridge

I moved to New Hampshire's seacoast area when I started at the University of New Hampshire, and left five years later when I moved to California to start my career of always being at the hot technology companies just after they were no longer hot. These were the first five years of my adult life; I went to school, I fell in love, I got married, worked at a radio station and three startup tech companies (EZ Data, Enterprise Systems, and a third, the owner of which would prefer I don't talk about my time there on the Internet, as I found out the last time I did so).

Anyway, EZ Data was based out of Newington, and A... the unnamed company was based out of Portsmouth, and we lived in Dover, so every single day we would cross this beautiful old bridge, the Sullivan Bridge, our first bridge of the three in this post. Below the bridge was Hilton Park, where we could bring our lunches and watch the boats sailing on Little Bay.

After we left for California, they closed the bridge, which was used for southbound traffic when we lived there, and it is now used only for pedestrian traffic. The state is now deciding whether to renovate it for traffic, just tear it down, or replace all the bridges with a super-wide bridge. These bridges are the bottleneck for traffic from the Portsmouth area to the 'burbs to the north.

I'm hoping for restoration for traffic, of course. Though it would be hideously expensive, it is the second most historic bridge in the area.

Well, that was before Portsmouth decommissioned the first most historic bridge, the Memorial Bridge.

Sarah Mildred Long Bridge

The Sarah Mildred Long Bridge is more commonly known as "the middle bridge". It connects the city of Portsmouth with Kittery, Maine, home of a naval base and the Kittery Trading Post. It is one of two drawbridges across the Piscataqua River, and with the decommissioning of the Memorial Bridge, the only one that remains.

The bascule (the moving bit) lifts every fifteen minutes during the day to allow traffic through, but this bridge has a secret. Automobile and truck traffic runs along the top, but there is a train track that runs along the bottom. If a boat comes by that could get by if the train track section just weren't there, the bridge master can slide the bottom part to the side.

The Memorial Bridge looks similar to the Long Bridge, but with curvier trusses on either side of the bascule. I'd have pictures of it, but A) they re-arranged the Portsmouth traffic so much that I couldn't find it, and B) I thought this WAS the Memorial Bridge. Which shows how memory fades after a quarter century away. Anyway, C) they decommissioned it.

I'll get it next time, what's left of it.

Piscataqua River Bridge

The Piscataqua River Bridge rises dramatically high above the Portsmouth skyline. Like the Memorial Bridge and the Long Bridge, the Piscataqua River Bridge crosses the (wait for it) Piscataqua River and connects the city with Kittery, Maine, bringing a northern cap to New Hampshire's colorful and historic eleven miles of coast.

Out of all the cities I have lived or worked in, Portsmouth was the most beautiful. Watching a live performance of "Grease" on the lawn on Strawberry Bank, staggering drunkenly through snow shrouded city streets singing sea shanties after a memorable meal at The Library, geeking out with plastic baggy video games at the Atari Computer Club, lining up outside the Jerry Lewis Cinema to see The Empire Strikes Back... it's a painfully breathtaking example of a New England seacoast town.

Pelham Bay/Shore Road Bridge, Bronx, NY

Pelham Bay Bridge

It's still catch-up week here at Life, On a Bridged. This weekend is going to be a post about three beautiful bridges in the Portsmouth, NH area, and next week is going to be Covered Bridge Week. (Preview: we cover the most haunted bridge in the Berkshires!)

But for now, we're in the Bronx, at the Pelham Bay/Shore Road Bridge.

Usually when I visit the Bronx, I go by train. It's convenient, comfortable and even fun. Once in the city, the subway and buses bring me anywhere I need to go. This is how things were for years, until I got a car. While following the Merritt Parkway into New York, I came for the first time to NYC in a car. And that made all the difference. Unlike traveling in a train, in a car I could get lost. And while lost, I could find things.

I'd hoped to get a NYC bridge while I was in the area before heading back home to Connecticut (and I did, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge). On the way to that bridge, I passed over this bridge. I immediately turned around, parked at the Bronx Equestrian Center, and looked for someplace with a good view of the bridge.

I didn't have to go far; there is a trail off of City Island Road (which has some pretty cool bike paths) which goes right up to the mouth of the Hutchinson River, over which the bridge runs.

The bridge is one of the busiest drawbridges in the city, second only to the Hamilton Avenue Bridge in Brooklyn. (Reading that report, btw, I bet I could spend a year, easy, just photographing New York City's historic bridges). It was completed in 1909, replacing a wooden bridge that crossed the river nearby, and celebrated its centennial a couple years back.

It's not a long bridge, but you can walk over it and enjoy both halves of the Pelham Bay Park (and landfill!). Say what you like about NYC, they have amazing parks. This trip I visited the Pelham Bay Park and the Ferry Point Park and was impressed by them both.

Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge, Stratford-Milford, CT

Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge

I thought I'd be running out of bridge pictures too fast, so I slowed to posting just once a week. That's kinda backfired, and now I have many bridges on the pile to discuss. Part of my reluctance with some of them is that they are... just bridges. You have the exciting ones, and then you have the more or less standard ones, like this one, the Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge, which takes the Wilbur Cross Parkway over the Housatonic River between Stratford and Milford.

Route 15 here continues west toward New York and becomes the famous Merritt Parkway, of which I've written. On the Stratford side of the bridge is the Sikorsky Aircraft Company. They make helicopters.

You may have heard of them. The helicopter they have mounted in front of the factory is the first thing I noticed about the place :)

The bridge itself is a standard beam bridge. There is a nice pedestrian/bicycle walkway on the north side of the bridge leading up from a loop park which also extends beneath the bridge. It's a very pleasant stroll, and even though it was pretty chilly the day I went, there were a lot of people enjoying it.

Estuary

You can tell from the barrenness that this was taken a couple months ago. They call this field an estuary, but it looks mowed, which kinda doesn't have the same connotations of unspoiled wetlands that the word conjures up for me. Elkhorn Slough back in Moss Landing -- now there was an estuary.

If anyone asks, I would totally move back to the Monterey area if I could swing it. And I'd take my daughter and her family back with me, cuz I'm totally selfish like that.

Anyway, the Sikorsky Bridge is one of the last bridges on the Housatonic I had yet to photograph. There's the possibility that I will do another state-spanning photography day with the Housatonic, because I'm pretty sure all the bridges along it are easily accessible. Unlike the Connecticut River as it flows through Massachusetts; that river twists and turns and little thought is given to tourists. I tried to get the French King Bridge on my way up to Cow Hampshire last weekend, and had to give up. The only way I could see to get a picture without trespassing in someone's yard on a hill a half mile away (and I was tempted) was to get on a boat.

Anyway I'll probably write that bridge up just to get it off my camera.