Bridge to nowhere. Looks like something the government funded in Alaska.
I lived in Alaska during the Gravina Island Bridge, aka "Bridge to Nowhere", drama. Then Alaska governor Sarah Palin was totally for it until 2008, when McCain picked her for his VP. Then she was totally against it. The Gravina Island Bridge project was cancelled. However, Palin and the state held onto the money and spent it on other transportation projects.
The Middle Bridge in the above photo is a critical bridge for the state of Colorado. There are only four major highways that go east to west in the state and if any one of those closes, the detours are measured in 4 or more hours extra travel time and potentially hundreds of miles. If the Middle Bridge closes, the recommended detours are minimum 330 miles!
So when this bridge closed after a 3 inch crack was discovered in April of this year, the local impact was severe! Students were cut off from school and medevac between Gunnison and Montrose took additional hours until local pilots volunteered to ferry patients to and from the Montrose hospital.
The bridge is back at full capacity, as is the Lake Creek bridge down the road. It had similar, but not as severe as on the Middle Bridge, cracks and was opened to full capacity about a half hour after I took this photo.
Just testing some old equipment to see how well it holds up today. This is a 16 year old 12mp Nikon D700 shot handheld at ISO 1250 and 1/80 second with the 25 year old 28-70 f2.8 Nikkor zoom shot at f2.8 and 70mm. The sharpness and bokeh and noise all hold up remarkably well to my eyes. I think it could be printed poster size and still look fine from normal viewing distances. Should be totally usable at 8x10 and 16x20 inches. You can click though to flcker to pixel peep on the full size image and make your own judgment. To some extent we are chasing more megapixels than we need most of the time.
Comments
The Middle Bridge in the above photo is a critical bridge for the state of Colorado. There are only four major highways that go east to west in the state and if any one of those closes, the detours are measured in 4 or more hours extra travel time and potentially hundreds of miles. If the Middle Bridge closes, the recommended detours are minimum 330 miles!
So when this bridge closed after a 3 inch crack was discovered in April of this year, the local impact was severe! Students were cut off from school and medevac between Gunnison and Montrose took additional hours until local pilots volunteered to ferry patients to and from the Montrose hospital.
The bridge is back at full capacity, as is the Lake Creek bridge down the road. It had similar, but not as severe as on the Middle Bridge, cracks and was opened to full capacity about a half hour after I took this photo.