Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Because you haven't seen enough of the flood on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, The Weather Channel...

Adam and I headed over to Davenport's SkyBridge this afternoon, known to us locals as "The Bridge To Nowhere", so we could take some pictures of the flood. Based on the number of people heading to the bridge, and that were IN the bridge, Adam and I realized that finally this bridge has a purpose. Above and below I've included a couple pictures of the bridge, obviously taken before the great flood of '08, so you can see that it really does go nowhere. Well, it starts out in a parking garage and ends up nowhere. In the pic below you can see how cool it is at night because they light it up. Red and green at Christmas time, Red, White, and Blue during those patriotic moments, etc. The fireworks in the background are most likely coming from the baseball park that is a block or two from the bridge.

This skybridge is now basically straddling dry and very wet land. We headed downtown and parked a couple blocks from the Figge Art Museum, who's front is now in the water. I took a few pictures and we headed over to the bridge...TO NOWHERE!!! *cue scary music.

There were probably about a dozen or more people up there with about half as many coming on and off the elevator at any given time. We had never ventured onto the skybridge since it was finished about three years ago. Despite a lot of the residents of Davenport making fun of this bridge and the fact that it really doesn't end anywhere, and putting up a good fight to keep it out when it was first conceived, it really is a cool place to check out the river (in or out of it's banks) as well as check out the sights of the riverfront, like LeClaire Park, Centennial Bridge, Davenport Levee, the Arsenal Bridge and the Casino boat.






These pictures above were taken from the road (obviously) near the Figge Art Museum.

This picture was taken on the bridge looking east down what is now quite literally River Drive. Don't worry, during the next pictures I remembered to take the flash off so as to not get blinded by the glare of the glass.











This is The Dock Restaurant which, lucky for them, closed a couple years ago. Something tells me they wont be selling it anytime soon. At least not without a lot of clean-up.








Here we are on the other side of the bridge looking West down River Drive. To the right you can see the Figge which is the larger glass building. Out in the distance you can see Centennial Bridge and under that bridge is John O'Donnell Stadium. Actually, it's now called Modern Woodman Park, because everyone has a price.

And here's the cute little hot dog stand just to the side of the casino boat. I remember my mom and I coming here, probably in '94 and on the corner of the building they had it marked where the river was during all of the floods. I was checking them out, '68, '70-something, wondering, "Where's '93?" OH! They had added a stick to the top of the roof that stick out and waaaay at the top was written '93. As you can see this year hasn't been as bad.

Looking west to Centennial Bridge.

















This is the view you get from the end of the bridge on the observation deck. Can anyone guess why the casino has been closed?? Anyone??













Here's a little better view of The Dock Restaurant.
















And finally, one of my favorite pictures I took today, although it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, thanks to the sun. These are, or were, actually, parking spaces for riverboat employees. What they say are SUPERSTAR PARKING. Superstar indeed!







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In no particular order I'm a wife, mother, sister, daughter and general observer of humans.