Thoughts on my pics

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The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (aerial photo) opens for people to walk across its 4.3 miles in the spring. Not every year like it used to, though. I took vastly more pictures than I expected I would take. I took 429 pictures and uploaded 143. This really turned out to be about 3 albums in one. First the Bay Bridge walk itself, second the wildlife and scenery and third the boats and ships including the restarting of the Volvo Ocean Race.

I understand about 20,000 people walked across the bridge. I parked on one of the two Western Shore lots and took a bus provided by the Washington D.C. transit authority to the Eastern end of the bridge. All of the non-articulated buses I saw were natural gas or hybrid buses. I rode a natural gas bus to and from the parking area. The event appeared to be well planned and executed. Even though it took me a long time to get into a parking space, there was very little wait at either end to get on the bus and everyone was friendly. On the bridge itself there were a lot of personnel watching out for us from officers stationed at fairly frequent intervals to mini-ambulances stationed at a few places along the bridge. There were port-a-potties at both ends of the bridge and at several places along the bridge itself, but apparently ran out of TP fairly early as people were checking to see if others had any. Also on the bridge were two tanker trucks supplying water to a bunch of water fountains. No containers were apparently being passed out so you had to fill up your own. Helicopters were flying the length of the bridge keeping an eye out for problems. There were also planes pulling banners and an unusual sight, a helicopter towing a banner.

At the Eastern end of the bridge there is a pond in between the eastbound and westbound spans. This pond held a few treasures including a pair of swan nesting, a few mallards, a Red Winged Blackbird and some sort of black butterfly. Further along the bridge I caught my first photos of a bird called a Common Tern. Toward the middle of the bridge I was taking pictures of Gulls and Cormorants. I finally got some decent photos of Cormorants. They’re hard to photograph because they fly very fast. Scenic photos of both shorelines and the bridge itself were taken along the entire walk.

Since this was the Volvo Ocean Race restart day there were quite a few boats and ships to the South of the bridge including the Liberty Ship John W. Brown which I took photos of from the grounds of Fort McHenry a little while back, a sailing ship that appeared to be the Pride of Baltimore II and other sailing and motor boats lining up to watch the race. There was also quite a bit of boat traffic under the bridge. Various police and coast guard boats were patrolling the boat to make everybody pass under the bridge under a particular span towards the East end. Photos were also taken of two bay lighthouses, the Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse and the Baltimore Lighthouse (which, incidentally, is not at Baltimore). When the Volvo Ocean Race restarted I was just to the East of the suspension span and got some pretty decent shots of the contenders.

I got several good photos of the bridges themselves from various points along the bridge, especially the Western end where the bridges curve northward and give you a good view between the spans towards the East.

All in all, this walk made for a good day. I was tired and a bit sunburned, but I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the next time they open the bridge to walkers. Despite the very long wait Eastbound vehicles had on the approach to crossing the bridge (only one lane was available to them), many of them seemed to maintain good humor crossing the bridge with some vehicle occupants cheering and waving the walkers and some trucks blowing their air horns.