The River Cruise

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting much this year, in spite of my intent early on to do so.  That’s mainly because I haven’t been shooting much, either.  Then there’s the old photography adage, “Take you camera everywhere you go.”, and that’s just what I did.

My ‘day job’ employer sponsored our annual company outing and this time it was a dinner cruise on the Mississippi River in Dubuque.  The boat was nice, but kind of reminded me of the Minnow from Gilligan’s Island.  Weather was interesting.  It rained heavily while we were eating… brought visions of the “three hour tour”… then cleared up leaving some intriguing cloud formations.  Kind of big and puffy on top and dark and brooding on the bottom.  You can see some of the dark and brooding part in the top of this photo.  After the rain cleared I got the camera out and just shot photo after photo after photo.  I would go in 4 to 5 shots bursts figuring that increased my chances of getting one clear and in focus shot out of the burst.

This is a railroad bridge… boringly named the Dubuque Rail Bridge… that stays open all the time and closes only when needed for a train, which I understand isn’t often anymore.  The bridge is, as of this writing, is 151 years old, being built in 1868.  And then there’s this interesting little factoid, per the link above…

Because of a 150-foot (46 m) bluff very close to the Mississippi riverbank on the Illinois side, the railroad tracks enter a 1/4-mile tunnel that curves 90-degrees to the south to allow trains to proceed along the tracks adjacent to the river south of the bridge.

You can’t really see him in this photo but there’s the bridge tender standing on the side watching the boats.  What a lonely job that must be.

The bridge in the background is the Dubuque-Wisconsin Bridge.  It’s mildly non-interesting that the railroad bridge goes to Illinois and the Dubuque-Wisconin Bridge goes to… wait for it… Wisconsin.

That was my Saturday night.  How was yours?