Conte de trois ponts

Wind conditions today convinced me to stay close to the river rather than venture into the heart of the big city. We have a ways to go before reaching what the tourism board calls peak color but the trees along the river are a'changin'.

I had to add some extra foofarol at each bridge as it was necessary to get off the River Road, get up on the bridge, try to line up an interesting photo, and then figure out the least painful way to get back onto the River Road.

Here is the Marshall Avenue bridge looking upstream. All photos will be facing upstream as the sun position dictated photos taken in that direction. Here the problem of lining up the photo was that I was trying to line up the Franklin Avenue bridge between the spans of the railroad bridge in a way that would be visually interesting.The sky was a not as blue today as it has been. Those wispy clouds are a harbinger of something, probably something cold.

Also note that I have gone with the Saint Paul centric naming conventions here. People in Minneapolis have another name for the Marshall Avenue bridge. *sniff* They are wrong. Note also that for the Franklin Avenue bridge, that is Minneapolis on both sides of the river, so it is Franklin Avenue on both sides. For that bridge people in Minneapolis are correct.

I rode on down past the big new house (some will know what that means) and repeated the whole up onto the bridge thing at the Ford Parkway bridge. Actually for this one I think even a lot of Minneapolis people call it the Ford Parkway bridge.The Marshall Avenue bridge is visible in the distance.

My final bridge was the Highway 5 bridge at Fort Snelling. This one is tricky as it involves having to dismount, put my cleat covers on, and then carry the bicycle down about 25 steps from the River Road level to the freeway level while wearing bicycle shoes (with rubber cleat covers). Then the photo is a little tricky because it is a freeway, which I guess means that the railing on the bridge has to be about 7 or 8 feet high with closely spaced bars, I assume to discourage jumpers. The other two bridges make no such provisions, I wonder why they did it here.I had to almost completely cross the river to get to the vantage point to take that photo so as long as I had gone that far, I went ahead and completed the trek. Note: far end of bridge? cleat covers, 25 or 30 steps again up to the level of historic Fort Snelling.

I knew there was a bike path along the side of the bluff from Fort Snelling State Park down to Minnehaha Falls city park so I rode around the historic old stone Fort and descended the steep trail down the bluff into the state park. I found the path I was looking for easily enough and started down it towards Minneapolis. There was more traffic on that path than I expected but that was because I expected no one. There were only a few.

The result of riding that path was that I found myself passing this place again.And it was pretty again today. TOPWLH and I were examining the photos and video taken over there a few days ago and were puzzled by that white line through the photo just below the top of the falls. We thought it might be a piece of grass or a trick of the light or something. Today I took a close look, it is a rock layer. If I was a geologist I would explain it. I am not a geologist, I just pretend to be one around my family. I do know from having geologist friends that the rock that the Falls goes over there is sedimentary rock, rock laid down in layers. So one of the layers is quite light colored. Thanks and a tip of the Hatlo hat to Dennis and Heather. Some will recognize the Hatlo hat reference.

I had crossed back on to the Saint Paul side and was riding along the River Road on my way home. There are several stop signs for major streets heading off into the city and as I approached one I could hear brakes squeaking on a vehicle approaching me from behind.

I totally paused at the stop sign and was expecting the noise making vehicle to pull alongside and be revealed as either a rust bucket pick up truck or maybe an about 1992 Ford Escort.

Lamborghini.

I rode along in gape mouthed amazement.

Dude, it's a Lamborghini. Your brakes squeak.

Checking the news from elsewhere on the internet I see that even though bicycling season is not yet over that I am now free to start working on evening up this really silly looking tan on my left hand.This is good news.