Ohio River blog

Nightime on the Kanawha

2012-02-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

I was on the bank of the Kanawha River tonight, trying to get a picture of something reflected in the smooth surface of the water, when the M/V Charleston came by and messed up the reflection. There's always a boat around when you don't need one. But it was interesting to have one pass so close by me in the dark. On the Ohio, boats pass by pretty far out from shore normally. They may come in close in some places, like the downbound channel at Manchester Island, but usually they're pretty far out. On the tributaries, you can get a little closer, I guess.

Eggner's Ferry Bridge update

2012-01-31T21:54:00.001-05:00

Divers are inspecting the bridge piers to see if they moved after impact.

What I'd like to know is how many lawyers are working on this thing right now, but that's something we may never know.

1K

2012-01-31T21:45:00.001-05:00

After 2 1/2 years of the Ohio River Blog, this is post number 1,000 of those that are still up. Some went up and came down for various reasons, but if you keep hitting the buttons at the bottom of the page and keep going to the end, you will see my 1,000 entries.

I wish I had something profound to say, but I don't, so we may as well end this historic occasion here and move on to the next item of business.

This, that and other things

2012-01-31T06:36:00.000-05:00

Here's another blogger's take on the Eggner's Ferry situation, with reference to road and bridge talk in the Louisville area. Usual disclaimer: I'm not endorsing the views in this person's blog. I merely link to it in case you're interested.

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Meanwhile, the commonwealth of Kentucky has issued a notice that it will have a meeting March 1 for contractors interested in a bridge project in downtown Louisville. A contract could be awarded in October.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting lead from The Courier-Journal:

A string of annual increases in spring enrollment at Indiana University Southeast and the University of Louisville came to a screeching halt this year — and officials say the shutdown of the Sherman Minton Bridge deserves at least some of the blame.

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And the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will have a public hearing Thursday about a proposed landfill at the J.M. Stuart Power Station near Maysville, Ky., and its permit to discharge hot water into creeks that flow into the Ohio River. According to the Maysville, Ky., paper, the plant is allowed to discharge water that's 82 to 85 degrees, but it has been releasing water as hot as 100 degrees.

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One more thing: I hate it when local TV reporters get cute or dramatic (worse, both) when doing stories about someone finding a body floating in the river. And that's all I've got to say about that.

Catching up on stuff

2012-01-29T09:04:00.001-05:00

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a piece this morning on how old the locks and dams in western Pennsylvania are and how there's no money to do anything about them. There's a short sidebar on what would happen should the Montgomery dam fail.

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This is a few days old, but repairs on the Sherman Minton Bridge in Louisville are half complete.

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And back in Pittsburgh, rust is threatening an World War II-era sub docked in the Ohio River.

(Updated) More on Eggners Ferry

2012-01-29T06:27:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: Now the question is whether the part of the bridge that's still standing has moved.

And it seems the local LEOs (law enforcement officers, as they call them on NCIS) will ticket people who walk out onto the part of the bridge that's still standing.

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Two days later and more details emerge about the Eggners Ferry Bridge accident.

This article says the guy steering the ship had been through the area many times before and he had two local pilots assisting him.

Meanwhile, state transportation department officials need to know if the impact caused a pier to shift and if it's still moving.

O. Nelson Jones

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Two weeks from today, Adam and I will be in Point Pleasant WV for an event at the Point Pleasant River Museum. There will be a dedication ceremony and reception honoring the memory of Captain Nelson Jones at 2 p.m. The new,upgraded pilothouse simulator in the museum will be named in Jones' honor

Meanwhile, Ingram Barge Co. and AmherstMadison will have the towboat O. Nelson Jones open for pubglic tours from noon to 5 p.m.

We've had several photos of the O. Nelson Jones on here before, both under its present name and under its previous name the Pennsylvania.

New Ironton-Russell bridge

2012-01-28T11:16:00.001-05:00

The Ohio River bridge connecting Ironton, Ohio, and Russell, Ky., celebrates its 90th anniversary this year. This month, people in the two cities are celebrating -- I suppose -- the fact that a contract has been awarded to build a new bridge.

Here's another article that sums up the problems Ohio has had in finding someone to build the new bridge within its budget estimates. In short, the Ohio Department of Transportation wanted to replace the old steel truss cantilever design with a single-tower cable stay bridge. But the bids for that design came in waaaay over estimate, so ODOT had a two-tower bridge designed. The low bid for this one came in over estimate, but within the 10 percent leeway ODOT can live with.

A single tower would have been taller and would have dominated the landscape, like the ones at Huntington WV and Steubenville OH. The towers on the two-tower bridge will be shorter.

Back in the early 1990s, when the old steel truss bridge at Huntington was being replaced, the West Virginia Division of Highways bid out both a steel truss bridge and a cable stay bridge. The truss bridge came in significantly lower price than the cable stay bridge, so it was built. A cable stay design would have been nicer, but the bridge as built has a nice sidewalk that offers a great view of the river and the city. And the sidewalk is used by a lot of people.

If you want more information, check out this site. Be sure to go to the bottom to see the comments from people who would like to see the old bridge saved for pedestrian use and historical value and from those who think it best that it come down.

Why red?

2012-01-28T10:27:00.001-05:00

One advantage to being 12 years old, as Adam is, is that you wonder why things are the way they are. Old fogies like me tend to have seen so much over the years that we don't ask questions that a kid would ask.

Like, why are most new coal barges painted red? We've seen some that were painted black, mostly with Campbell lettering on them, and Adam says he's seen a photo of a green barge, but why are coal barges painted a red that's almost maroon? His theory is that maroon matches the color of rust, so when the paint wears off and the steel starts rusting, you're less likely to notice.

But now he's wondering about the colors of barges, meaning the question will bug me, too.

More on the Eggners Ferry Bridge collapse (Updated)

2012-01-28T08:16:00.003-05:00

UPDATE: A Flicker member who goes by the name of Porch Dog has some photos of the Delta Mariner at the bridge.

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Here are some more news items on the Eggners Ferry Bridge collapse. If it weren't so far away, I'd be there right now.

Here's The Courier-Journal's report, which looks to me to be pretty good. The CJ is a Gannett paper. I worked for Gannett for many years. When a Gannett paper does good work, the work is very good. When it doesn't ...

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear promises speedy work to replace the bridge. This AP story gives details on the Delta Mariner's usual route, which takes it under the bridge.

Naturally, that part of the Tennessee River is closed to navigation for the time being.

From WAVE in Louisville: A local captain shares his thoughts on the accident and what it's like to take a boat that size under that particular bridge.

And here's a report from WPSD-TV.

More on the bridge collapse

2012-01-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

UPDATE 3: Here's something with the full text of an Associated Press story with the latest on the accident, along with a bunch of photos of the ship and the bridge.

UPDATE 2: Here are some photos of the wreckage, via Flickr member Michael Davis.

Here are some more from the collapse site.

UPDATE 1:

Check out this link to see a couple of photos of the ship sitting there in the water with the bridge sitting on its bow. It makes you wonder what the first words out of the pilot's mouth were when this happened.

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Statement by the company that seems to have owned the cargo transported on the Delta Mariner, which struck the bridge.

Here's an AP story.

I'll probably have more updates later today.

Terminology

2012-01-27T10:41:00.000-05:00

I've gone around with my newsroom colleagues about the difference between a tugboat and a towboat and the difference between a towboat and a barge. And I chuckle when folks on TV say after a heavy rain that Huntington's viaducts are flooded. I tell my colleagues that if the viaducts flood, the whole city is in trouble. I guess they like the word "viaduct" over the word "underpass" because "viaduct" sounds a lot fancier. But if they ever bothered to open the dictionary that every newsroom has, they would see that the viaduct goes over the underpass. You, the underpass passes under the viaduct.

It's kind of like when a TV anchor talks about picketers outside a building, I grind my teeth. A picket line is a line of pickets. Those people carrying signs are pickets.

I say all this because I was cruising the Internet a few minutes ago looking for updates on the bridge collapse in western Kentucky. First reports last night said the bridge had been struck by a barge. Now that I think about it, a pier might have been hit be a barge, but I doubt the bridge itself was.

This morning, some news accounts describe the Delta Mariner as a supply boat. Most refer to it as a cargo ship. One story described it as a "huge cargo ship."

This comes back to some fussing I've been doing with myself lately over exactly what riverboats are Dravo Vikings and what boats look like Vikings but aren't. Same with the 3200 series or "Steel" boats or those that look like them but aren't. By the way, don't anger school bus fans by referring to some older Thomas Built models as an FS-65. Take my word for it; don't do it.

Tennessee River bridge collapses after barge strike (Updated

2012-01-26T22:12:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: And more here.

Broadcast news outlets in western Kentucky are reporting that the Eggner Ferry Bridge, which crosses the Tennessee River in the Land Between the Lakes area, has partially collapsed after being struck by a barge.

That's about all that is known or reported at this time.

UPDATE: Now they're saying the bridge was struck by a "cargo ship." I looked up the Delta Mariner, and this is what I found.

And here's more.

M/V Escatawpa again

2012-01-25T22:23:00.002-05:00

Monday around sunset I saw the AmherstMadison towboat upbound on the Kanawha River at Charleston. Tuesday morning I saw it at the London Locks and Dam on the Kanawha, locking through downbound.

Catching up ... tomorrow, maybe

2012-01-25T22:07:00.003-05:00

I've spent the past few days up the Kanawha River and fighting to keep the sore throat away. People I've worked with have been fighting it, and my daughter says a lot of people at the call center where she works have had it. She had to take a day off because of it.

Sorry about all this. Maybe tomorrow we can catch up on a bunch of stuff that's been backing up.

M/V Escatawpa on the Kanawha

2012-01-23T20:40:00.002-05:00

I was able to get down to the Ohio River for a few minutes this morning. I saw some birds, but not in a good spot for a picture. I saw an AEP boat in the distance, but I didn't have time to wait for it.

As I was leaving work in Charleston, I did see a boat that turned out to be the Escatawpa, so I got my first towboat photo from up on the South Side Bridge over the Kanawha River. I look forward to getting a few more from there in better light.

And yes, the boat is pushing the barges on the port side rather than from the center.

Not much out there

2012-01-22T13:01:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the light posting of late, but there's not a whole lot that's been going on that has grabbed my interest in the little free time I've had this past week. I can't even get into the mood to mark the 75th anniversary of the 1937 flood. The natural disaster, not the Huntington-based band.

Sorry, it's a local joke. The band, which includes several people I used to work with at the Huntington paper, calls itself the 1937 Flood, the band, not the natural disaster. The band has been around for several years. Its original members chose the name so they could say people around town were always talking about them.

Adam and I tried chasing some boats this past week, but usually they were nowhere near where we thought they should be. And the river is not all that pretty right now. Choppy, muddy water; gray skies; bare trees; not much activity on the water; banks too muddy to walk on. But things will get better soon.

I have some photos from the Kanawha River that I may post later, when I get back from a birthday party for one of Adam's friends. Or I may dip into the archives again. You never know.

Ohio River caviar

2012-01-18T20:34:00.000-05:00

So as I read this story about a couple who pleaded guilty to illegally harvesting paddlefish eggs for sale as caviar, I asked myself, would I knowingly eat eggs from the Ohio River? Answer: probably not. I would say, Never, but I learned a long time ago that "never" and "always" come back at you in ways you don't like.

M/V Paul Tobin 1/15/12

2012-01-17T22:42:00.000-05:00

It's not the best, but here's a photo of the M/V Paul Tobin with the lower end of Huntington, W.Va., in the background on a nearly cloudless winter evening.

A towboat and a bridge

2012-01-15T21:35:00.001-05:00

It took us a couple of trips out, but Adam and I saw the new AEP boat the M/V Paul Tobin this evening. I got some pictures, but none of them were particularly good. It may have been the camera, or it may have been the photographer. I take that back. I may have gotten one good photo that was different from most that I post on here, but for some reason I can't get either an Apple computer or a Windows 7 computer to read the camera card.

At one point, Adam and I were on Huntington's 6th Street bridge (proper name: Robert C. Byrd Bridge) when it started vibrating in a way we had never felt before. It bothered me slightly, but it really got to Adam. To calm him down, I said before the Silver Bridge fell there were some unusual sounds. So what happens but we began hearing metal clanging sounds. He got nervous, and I said he could walk off the bridge if he wanted while I waited to see the Tobin. Then I said the sounds could be coming from the barges under the bridge. Sure enough, they were. But the bridge still vibrated more than usual.

Bridge demolition begins

2012-01-12T20:57:00.000-05:00

Demolition on the Fort Steuben Bridge at Steubenville, Ohio, has begun. The good part will come in February or March, when most of the structure will come down in a controlled explosion.

River infrastructure problems in the Pittsburgh District

2012-01-11T22:02:00.000-05:00

This is a long PDF file, but it's a good one. It's the Fall 2001 issue of Pittsburgh Engineer, and it has several articles about ongoing problems with navigation dams in the Pittsburgh District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. One article talks at length about problems at the Montgomery Locks and Dam. I like the opening paragraph in particular.

The US Army Corps of Engineers’ Pittsburgh District maintains the oldest, largest and most fatigued lock and dam network in the nation’s inland marine transportation system. Many of its structures are approaching an alarming tipping point where deterioration, inefficient funding and roughly $400 million in backlogged critical maintenance are converging to push the aging system to the brink of catastrophic failure. Nowhere is this more evident than at Montgomery Locks and Dam on the Ohio River and Elizabeth Locks and Dam on the Monongahela River, where the Corps has spent millions of dollars on temporary repairs.

Check it out. There are a lot of details in there.

Train crossing bridge, reflected

2012-01-10T06:44:00.002-05:00

If you want to see one of the best photos I've ever seen of a train crossing a bridge over the Ohio River, check out this one on Flickr. From the description of the shooting site, it's worth a day trip to the area just to check out the photo possibilities.

M/V Nashville Hunter

2012-01-08T20:08:00.001-05:00

Yes, I like watching the new Marathon Petroleum towboats go by. Marathon has three: the Detroit, the Kentucky and the Marathon. A fourth boat of the same design is on the lower part of the Ohio River. The Nashville Hunter of Hunter Marine is in the Smithland pool at the time of this writing. If you want to see a photo of it next to the Detroit, check out Barry Griffith's Flickr photostream.

Up into the Elk

2012-01-07T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Elk River in West Virginia empties into the Kanawha River a mile or so below the state capitol in Charleston. Every now and then an AmherstMadison boat known as the Iron Duke delivers a barge of sand or other construction material to a dock a short ways above the mouth of the Elk. This week I was lucky enough to see the Iron Duke turn out of the Kanawha and up the Elk twice.

This first shot was taken Thursday, Jan. 5.

And this was taken Friday, Jan. 6. It's the load of sand being delivered that day.

Spring flood and weather oscillations

2012-01-04T19:05:00.001-05:00

The flood on the Ohio River this past spring, particularly on the lower Ohio, would have to be the top news story of 2011, if this blog did that sort of thing. Here's a short scientific paper looking at whether the weather system that produced the flood is part of a regularly occurring oscillation, whether years or decades in length.

I talked with two of the study's authors for this story in The State Journal.

More coal-fired power generation closing

2012-01-04T06:44:00.000-05:00

Another utility has announced plans to replace coal-burning units with those powered by natural gas. This time it was Duke Energy, which said last week that it will shut down two units at its Gallagher power plant at New Albany, Ind., across the Ohio River from Louisville, and replace that generation with gas-fired units it is purchasing from another utility.

The two units at Gallagher will close by Feb. 1. According to this article in The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Gallagher has been a problem in the Louisville area for a long time. But its problems show that burning coal to make electricity is becoming more expensive, and the economics of burning coal require larger generating units that can justify the hundreds of millions of dollars that installing scrubbers and/or other equipment can cost.

Answered

2012-01-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

The other day I asked if there were any women working on towboats as captains, pilots, engineers ... anything other than cooks. C.R. Neale helped me out by telling me of one woman who is captain of a boat, and she happened to be the person who was steering the Marge McFarlin when I got a picture of it on Friday, which prompted my question in the first place. I made contact with her, and she verified she saw Adam and me and waved at us.

So thanks to C.R. for the help. And to the captain for responding to my inquiry verifying that it was her indeed.

And if you want to see what various towboats look like on the inside, check out C.R.'s site Aboard A Towboat.

Question

2012-01-02T10:20:00.000-05:00

Are there women working on towboats on the Ohio River in jobs other than as a cook? Any deckhands, mates, strikers, engineers, steersmen, pilots, captains or whatever?

Windy day at Kanawha 1

2012-01-01T22:25:00.004-05:00

It was a blustery day in Point Pleasant, W.Va., on New Year's Day. The Ohio and Kanawha rivers both showed the effects of strong winds under gray skies. But Adam and I got to see a few boats there at AmherstMadison harbor anyway, with the big ones being the M/V West Virginia ...

... and the AEP Legacy.

Good-bye to an old friend

2011-12-31T08:34:00.001-05:00

There comes a time when you have to let some things go, nomatter how comfortable you are with them, how much you liked them or how muchyou want to hold on to them forever. Such was the case this week in our familywith a car we have had for six years.

Our 2005 Ford Escape – probably the best car I ever owned –was totaled in an accident. There was too much damage to the body and thesuspension for it to be repaired, so State Farm bought it from us for an amountthat was more than I expected.

Adam was hoping he could learn to drive in this car, and hewanted to keep it forever so he could enter it in car shows someday as aneveryday car that people used to drive – like the 1965 Ford Fairlane we seefrom time to time.

This car was a good one. It was better in the snow than my1996 Jeep Cherokee. It was a joy to drive, too. It handled better than the twoVolkswagen W Sciroccos and the VW GTI I owned in the 1980s and 1990s.

Adam and I took the Escape on many of our river expeditions.We drove it to Rising Sun, Ind., to attend the christening of the M/V HoosierState. About six weeks later, we used it to chase the Hoosier State up the OhioRiver, from Huntington, W.Va., to the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam. We drove itin pre-dawn hours to get photos of bridges at sunrise. We drove it onto theferry at Augusta, Ky. Yeah, we drove it all over the place.

~~Hannah’s~~ Adam's older sister learned to drive in it. For a few months,it was the only vehicle in a family in which three people had jobs. Adam wantedto drive it, too, and he hoped it would be his when he turned 16.

But cars wear out. About a year ago, repairs started gettingexpensive. I wanted to keep the Escape running as long as I could, seeing ashow it was paid for. But you haveto let some things go. I was debating what to do with the Escape when theaccident happened. No one was hurt, by the way, so all we lost was a car.

This was the second vehicle I’ve owned that got up to200,000 miles. But both because too expensive to maintain at about 180,000miles. Lesson learned. I doubt that I will keep another vehicle to 200,000miles now. The cutoff will probably be around 175,000.

We really liked that Escape. We already a have its replacement. It’s not a Ford, and Ican tell you the replacement does not handle as well as the Escape. There was something about that car thatmade it the right car for our family at the right time. We already miss it.

(Photos: The Escape parked along the access road to the navigation light and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers boat ramp at Lacy Lane, Mile 287.5. And the odometer reading as Adam and I removed the license plate and personal belongings from the Escape at the body shop were the repair estimate was made.).

M/V Jackie Englert et al (updated)

2011-12-30T18:13:00.000-05:00

This morning Adam and I did something we haven't been able to do for a while. We chased a towboat up the Ohio River. We left home looking for one boat, but we ended up chasing three.

I noticed on Vessel Locations that the Crounse boat Jackie Englert was in the area. We'd never seen it, although we had seen its twins -- the Paula Ruble, the Linda Reed and the Janis R. Brewer. We found the Englert at South Point, Ohio, but not until we noticed it was a little ahead of the Linda Reed and the Nancy Sturgis, which were traveling together while pushing a tow of 15 barges.

We got our best views from up on Huntington's 6th Street Bridge.

First the Englert, with the Sam M. Fleming downbound.

I guess someone has to souge the boat.

The Sam M. Fleming ...

And the Reed and the Sturgis together, both pushing.

There are more Crounse boats Adam and I need to see. Someday, maybe.

UPDATE: It was fun to be out there on the river again, checking times boats go through locks and calculating where they are and where the best place would be to see them. The weather was okay, but I miss doing this in 90-degree summer heat with green trees and blue water.

Top pictures of 2011, part 4

2011-12-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

There come special occasions that you remember, like when you were 11 years old and a guy offers to let you steer his boat in a sternwheeler parade. What, that didn't happen to you when you were 11? Well it did with Adam this year. Our thanks to Steve Hutchison of the Port Explorer who let Adam steer his boat, and to Jack Fowler of the Point Pleasant River Museum for arranging it.

I couldn't select just one photo from that day, so I chose my five best. Here they are.

Top pictures of 2011, part 3

2011-12-30T12:01:00.000-05:00

The countdown continues ...

Number 4 is from Gallia County, Ohio, at about Mile 286.5, where you can see flood water from the Ohio River covering part of normally busy Route 7.

The next day and across the river a half mile up, the double yellow line of Route 2 disappears at Glenwood in Number 3. This is where the river normally covers a major road first in this area.

Number 2, after a day of open house and giving tours, the crew of the M/V Charleston of AmherstMadison goes back to work.

Next up, 1-1-1-1-1.

Top pictures of 2011, part 2

2011-12-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize until I was reviewing my photos from 2011 that I didn't make it very far down the Ohio River this year, but I did make a couple trips to the upper Ohio.

Back to the countdown ...

Number 8, the M/V William E. Porter at about Mile 302 on a nice afternoon in late fall.

Number 7, a stern view of the M/V Kentucky as it made a 180 at the mouth of the Big Sandy River during a July 4th excursion for VIPs.

Number 6, the M/V D.A. Grimm making tow on a January day.

Number 5.5 (because it was several miles up the Kanawha River), the John Amos power plant on an October day.

Number 5, the M/V Hoosier State leaving the Kanawha River and preparing to head down the Ohio at sunset. I also put this photo on Flicker, and AEP linked to it on its Facebook page, getting me a lot of views.

Next up, 4-3-2.

Top pictures of 2011, part 1

2011-12-29T20:00:00.000-05:00

Like everyone who has worked in a newsroom, I feel compelled to do some sort of year-in-review roundup. Last year I chose one photo from each month. This year is different. I started with a Top 10 list that grew to Top 15 and then Top 18.

I could have gone further, but we'll call it the Top 12, to be delivered in four installments. Yeah, the numbering is off, but that will be explained later. These all appeared on this blog or on my Flickr photostream.

So here we go, starting with ...

Number 12, two towboats on the Kanawha River. It looks like one was making the turn from the Ohio River into the Kanawha when another came to its aid.

Number 11, a heron in flight at the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam.

Number 10, a damselfly at the wildlife preserve at Greenbottom, in Cabell County, W.Va. This area is a wetlands that was expanded to mitigate for what was lost for construction of the lock canal at R.C. Byrd.

This particular wildlife area is a great place to photograph insects, by the way.

And Number 9, people at the public fishing area at the Belleville Locks and Dam.

This fishing area was added when the hydroelectric plant, at the right in the picture, was built. The fishing area used to be a weir made of some deadmen, and it was attached to the landward pier on the West Virginia side of the river.

To be continued ...

M/V Michael J. Grainger

2011-12-29T17:01:00.001-05:00

Adam and I saw the Michael J. Grainger at about Mile 302 today.

An hour or so earlier, we saw that the Grainger had overtaken what I think was the Jean Akin at around the East End Bridge (Mile 305). The Akin was moving pretty slow.

Hannibal Locks and Dam

2011-12-28T21:36:00.000-05:00

I got this one on a very hazy day back in July. This is the Hannibal Locks and Dam on the Ohio River. I was crossing the bridge below the dam from Ohio (left) to West Virginia (right). Traffic was light, so I was able to stop for a few seconds and grab this shot. I believe that's the towboat D.A. Grimm of Campbell Transportation leaving the locks upbound.

More Silver Bridge memories

2011-12-27T21:40:00.000-05:00

As mentioned before, I found an old issue of TheHerald-Dispatch of Huntington from December 1987 in which I had written severalstories pertaining to the 20^th anniversary of the Silver Bridgecollapse. The paper is in pretty bad shape. And I don’t want to run afoul ofcopyright laws, even if the paper was not on line in that era.

So here are a few quotes that people gave to me as I wasreporting the story.

“It passes through my mind pretty often. I had a dream lastnight, like I pulled up on the bridge and started across the water and therewasn’t a bridge there.” – William Edmondson, of King, N.C. Edmondson wasdriving a truck across the bridge when it fell. He went to the bottom of theriver, got out of the truck, came to the surface and was rescued.

“I recall families coming in and we’d naturally have to tellthem that person wasn’t there and we did hope they were on the other side ofthe river in Holzer Hospital. … I recall one lady who came in ande was lookingfor her husband. We had to tell her he wasn’t there and hopefully he was on the Ohio side. Quietly, she was crying.She left the building. We tried to console her as much as possible.” – Betty Martin,a nurse at Pleasant Valley Hospital in Point Pleasant, W.Va., at the time. Thewoman looking for her husband later learned he died on the bridge.

“None of our local people gave us any trouble. … It was theNew Yorkers and all that was a pain in the butt. I ran one New Yorker out oftown, for the New York Times.’’ – Andy Wilson, at the time the Civil Defensedirector for Mason County, W.Va. Wilson said the Times reporter hired a smallboat to take him out to a recovery barge to take pictures. Wilson said he sentsomeone out to arrest the reporter, whose name he could not recall. Wilson saida state trooper opened the reporter’s camera and exposed all the film canistersthe reporter carried. Wilson told the reporter he could leave the area or check into the county jail.

“I was standing out front working on a car, heard this loudnoise, like a sonic boom. The bridge was just shaking like a snake. It let go.Of course, everybody was running around in a panic. Nobody could believe itfell. I couldn’t, myself.” – Bill Joe Evans, who had bought the Sohio stationnear the Ohio end of the bridge a few months before the collapse.

“That’s all you heard everywhere you went, for weeks andweeks. It was continual discussion through Christmas and beyond. Everybody hadfamily on there. It touched everybody.” – Herb Bush, who managed the Bob EvansSteak House near the bridge. The Steak House was the first restaurant Evansstarted, and it was a popular eating spot for truckers making the trip from thecar factories in Detroit to points south.

There were more quotes and more stories told, but these stood out to me as I read that yellowing, crumbling newspaper.

Along with the stories I wrote was one by Dave Peyton, a columnist at the paper. He wrote about how he wanted to to go the disaster site that night but was told by an editor the paper had enough people there already. He said he was going anyway, so the editor suggested he go up the Ohio side, as the two Huntington papers had sent all their people to the West Virginia side.

Here is one paragraph from what Peyton wrote:

"On the Ohio side, an immense section of the bridge had fallen in a cornfield and debris -- a mixture of broken concrete, twisted steel beams and wrecked vehicles, lay strewn all the way to the water's edge. It was a visible symbol of what everyone knew it looked like under the Ohio River. And it was an indication to those who would be involved in recovery efforts that their job would be horrendously complex and time consuming."

I may have more on the Silver Bridge in coming weeks as the people writing a book about the disaster visit the Point Pleasant area to sort through printed material, keepsake items from the disaster and new interviews with people who were on the bridge or nearby that night and in following days.

But for now, this should do.

Coming: More on the Silver Bridge

2011-12-27T16:35:00.004-05:00

The other night I found some newspaper stories that I wrote in 1987 for the 20th anniversary of the Silver Bridge collapse. When I get the time and energy tonight, I'll type up some summaries and some quotes from the stories. Among other things, they explain why that New York Times reporter got into trouble while covering the recovery efforts, and there will be some remembrances by a truck driver who went to the bottom of the river with his truck but got out and was rescued.

An old school

2011-12-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

When I drive the roads along the Ohio River, I sometimes look for buildings that might have been old country stores or old schools. Sometimes, they're the same building.

Today as I drove Ohio Route 7 in southern Gallia County, I looked at a couple of old buildings that were schools until early 1961 -- about 51 years ago. This first one was the old Swan Creek Rural School.

As you can see, it's a barn now. A similar school, on Bladen Road about a mile off Route 7, remains closer to its original condition. It was the old Bethel Rural School.

I'm kind of fond of these buildings because I attended the first half of first grade in one of these schools. They were three-room schools with grades 1 through 8. At Bethel, 1 and 2 were in the room in the back. One of the front rooms had 3-4-5, with the other holding 6-7-8. There was one teacher per room.

The Bethel school has all three chimneys standing, although you can't tell from this angle.

The principal marked recess beginning and ending by ringing a hand bell. Water came from a well that you pumped manually. The restroom ... well, at Bethel it was the outhouse up on the hill.

I don't know much about the architecture of these buildings, although I am told there were several of this design in Ohio. And I don't know when they were built, but I assume they've been empty longer than they were occupied.

Because I had Adam kind of late in life, I'm probably the last person who attended these schools who would have a child in one if they were open today and if we lived in that area.

Nostalgic? Do I wish my kids could have spent some time attending one of these schools? Not a bit. But I am glad I have some memories of them.

M/V Onward in 1947

2011-12-26T19:56:00.002-05:00

This was referred to me by a blog reader named Robert about two years ago, so it's time it got another mention. It's a YouTube video, and the title says it's the towboat Onward at the Hillman ~~Brothers~~ Barge & Construction Co. yards in 1947, when it was owned by O.F. Shearer and Sons. The Onward was built in 1947. Today it's known as the Charleston and is owned by AmherstMadison.

Two boats

2011-12-26T19:19:00.001-05:00

There wasn't a lot of boat traffic in the Greenup or the Robert C. Byrd pools today, at least from what I saw, I did see the M/V Wally Roller ...

... at about Mile 294 and the Nell ...

... at about Mile 281. Usually I see the Nell close to the mouth of the Kanawha River, but every now and then I see it downriver. A couple of summers ago, Adam and I saw it help the Chuck Zebula take a 25-barge tow through the R.C. Byrd locks.

Another hydroelectric plant coming?

2011-12-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Could another hydroelectric power plant be coming to an Ohio River dam, this time at New Cumberland? Perhaps so, as a company known as Hydro Green Energy LLC has announced plans to file an application this coming week to build such a plant.

12/24

2011-12-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

Here it is Christmas Eve, or as the calendar says, Dec. 24. A lot of us will be traveling or enjoying the next two or three days with family. But some of us will be working this weekend. In my early days as a newspaper reporter, I usually worked every Christmas so folks with families could enjoy the time off.

But some people may not have a choice. Someone has to keep the steel mills working, the power plants running, the hospitals ready to serve and the riverboats moving. I've read that at one time, the Ohio River Company boats stopped for a few hours on Christmas day to give their crews a little time off, but I don't know if anyone does that anymore.

Here are four towboat photos I've taken on December 25s of years past. I'll be with the wife and kids making a grandma run on Sunday, so I might get some more then. Until then, we'll be thinking of the guys on the river this weekend, mainly those who would rather be home.

2009 archives, part 6

2011-12-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

Wrapping up this trip down Memory Creek with a few more pictures ...

Point Pleasant, W.Va., on New Year's Day. The two power plants are five to ten miles from the shooting spot.

The M/V George King. When Adam saw this boat, something clicked in his brain and he decided he liked towboats and wanted to learn more about them, just as he did about school buses.

The Jincy pushing and the Jean Akin deadheading southbound at the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam.

And finally, this. I can't remember where I saw it. But it must have been attached to a few things in its lifetime.

Got boats?

2011-12-23T06:58:00.000-05:00

One more day of work, and then I have most (but not all) of next week off. Most of that time will be spent at home, doing exciting stuff like cleaning and getting some car repairs taken care of. But with a few days free, the wife might spring me to do some towboat chasing.

If you're on a boat passing through or near the Huntington area -- one that I could use a good photo of, which is most of them -- feel free to drop me a line in the comment section of any blog entry on here. I'll be checking them several times a day.

And if you see a guy in an odd place along the river stretching or bending in unusual ways trying to get a photo, it's probably me. If there's a skinny kid with him -- one who looks like he's going through another growth spurt -- it's Adam. Someone told me that Adam and I have a reputation along this part of the river. But that's okay with us.

May the dispatchers look upon us favorably.

2009 archives, part 5

2011-12-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

From November 2009, here's the M/V Leonard L. Whittington passing Huntington with 15 coal loads, all lit up in crimson by the setting sun.

Around noon, one more 2009 archive post coming.

Coal and mercury

2011-12-22T07:02:00.002-05:00

I work for a weekly business newspaper that focuses on West Virginia. For a while, we've been following the EPA mercury rules that were announced Tuesday afternoon. A story by our standout energy reporter Pam Kasey is here. For an Ohio perspective, check out this one from the Akron Beacon-Journal.

The new rule will accelerate the closure schedule of some older, smaller coal-fired power plants. In the case of one along the Ohio River -- Philip Sporn, at about Mile 242, give or take a couple -- the mercury rule means the plant will close by Dec. 31, 2014, according to its owner, American Electric Power. But the plant has been operating at minimal output in recent years anyway, from what I understand.

For what it's worth, AEP announced its accelerated closure schedule back in June. Some companies, such as FirstEnergy, are not talking about their plans.

I don't know how many news stories I've read this year about smaller coal-fired plants begin shut down before the end of this decade. Given ever-stricter environmental regulations and the age of these plants, it's just not cost-effective to retrofit them with scrubbers or other systems to cut down on the nasty stuff that comes out of their stacks.

In a Wall Street Journal article from March 7, Michael Morris, then the CEO of AEP, explained it this way:

What we've done over the last number of years at American Electric Power is we retrofitted our larger units. Our largest plants are 1,300 megawatts; we have a 250 class, a 500 class, an 800 class and a 1,300-megawatt class. We've retrofitted the 1,300s, so we have gotten better efficiencies there.
But you get to a point where you look out at the timeline left of the station and you say to yourself, "We can't put any more capital to work there." So, when you look at our fleet, if you look at the 500-megawatt class, that's on the border. Anything below that is going to go. It's just going to go in its normal course. That will be affected by legislation, regulation, whatever comes out of the requirements at a state level or a federal level.

So the trickle of articles about smaller coal plants shutting down didn't surprise me any. If there was any surprise, it was that there are so many of them still operating.

2009 archives, part 4

2011-12-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

Two more.

First, a city of Huntington worker used a fire hose to wash mud off the lower levels of Harris Riverfront Park.

And later in the summer, Adam and I were on our way back to Huntington from a couple of hours in Portsmouth, Ohio. We had to pull off the road near Greenup, Ky., because the rain was so heavy. We stopped at Catlettsburg to see if any boats were there. When we looked down the river, we saw the wall of rain coming at us again.

2009 archives, part 3

2011-12-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite spots along the Ohio River shore is an old coal tipple that was used for a while in the 1970s but has long been out of service. As late as spring of this year, I think, some of the metal structure was still there, but I'm pretty sure it was removed this summer. Now the main things that are left are the deadmen where barges once were tied up.

Here are some pictures of how some of those structures looked before they were removed. I went for an artsy effect rather than my normal journalistic one.

Back in the 1970s, there were several coal tipples built along the river in my area. And there were several that were proposed and even permitted but were never built. Moving coal from the mine to the river by truck was a big deal, but I don't know if any coal-to-river tipples are in operation anymore from say, Parkersburg, W.Va., to Portsmouth, Ohio. I don't know of any active mines close enough to the river to make such a business feasible anymore, actually.

2009 archives, part 2

2011-12-19T01:10:00.000-05:00

Three more from 2009, with the general theme of hanging out.

First, on a warm April evening, these teens congregate at the theater at Harris Riverfront Park in Huntington. The river had been up and gone down, so the lowest levels of the park were covered in mud and wouldn't be cleaned until after Memorial Day.

Here, in August, is a guy in a motorized wheelchair feeding birds at the park.

I used to take old bread down there and give to the birds myself. Then I read that for ducks and geese, that's pretty much junk food. Pigeons, I don't know.

And here's one from June of that year, taken at Virginia Point Park at Kenova, W.Va., at the mouth of the Big Sandy River. Some mayflies found their way onto a spider's web. Pardon me if my mourning is subdued. I've had a couple of summertime day trips ruined by swarming mayflies.

2009 archives, part 1

2011-12-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

I was looking for something and got an idea. Why not go way back in the archives to say, 2009, the year this blog started, and dig out some photos to show? Some of these you may have seen before. Some have not been put on line.

So over the next few days, I'll run two or three a day, as long as there's interest from either you or me. We'll have the usual blog stuff, too, but I just felt the need to look back a couple of years.

First, some photos from the Point Pleasant river festival that year. Here are a lot of sternwheelers tied up to the city's riverfront park ...

And here is a closeup of one, the Juanita.

I liked this boat in particular because in the early to mid 1980s I did a piece for the Huntington newspaper about the three remaining working sternwheelers on the Ohio -- the Lady Lois of Merdie Boggs in Catlettsburg KY, the Donald B down at Maysville KY and the Juanita of AEP at Lakin WV. Back then, a fellow by the name of Worthy Love worked on the Juanita as a deckhand of sorts.

The Juanita has since changed hands, and on this particular day I chatted with the fellow who owned it.

Three items in the news

2011-12-18T09:38:00.001-05:00

Evansville's bicentennial isn't until March 27, but the celebration begins today.

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An endangered species of mussel has been found in the Ohio River in western Kentucky.

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A day or two ago, I mentioned a natural gas processing plant being built along the river near the town of Natrium, between the West Virginia cities of Moundsville and New Martinsville. Here's more from the Wheeling newspapers.

The mouth of the Kanawha

2011-12-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Adam and I went up the Ohio River to his grandma's house today. We didn't see much that we could photograph on the Ohio -- the boats we saw were in bad shooting spots or were obstructed. But we did see some on the Kanawha when we got to Point Pleasant. Here are a few.

The Norman L. Snodgrass

The Martha Mac

The O. Nelson Jones. This boat originally was the L. Fiore of the Ohio River Co. and later the Pennsylvania when it was acquired by AmherstMadison.

Adam said Vessel Locations indicates this would be the William E. Porter.

Some days you get the bear ...

2011-12-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

Adam and I were crossing a high-speed bridge with no sidewalks when was saw a Crounse boat coming down the Ohio River. We tried to get a shot, but all we could do was point the camera out the window and hope to get something other than a steel beam. This was the result.

You can't win 'em all, I guess.

News and history

2011-12-17T07:31:00.000-05:00

Here's an article from Forbes magazine about the towing industry. Being Forbes, they got access to executives that people like me can't get near. It's a good read.

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Sorry, but I missed an important anniversary yesterday. It was the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid earthquake.

But we have anniversaries of the aftershocks coming.

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Construction is under way on a natural gas processing plant at Natrium, W.Va., in West Virginia's Northern Panhandle. The plant will process shale gas from West Virginia and Ohio.

Final Silver Bridge thoughts for 2011

2011-12-15T20:32:00.001-05:00

One more Silver Bridge item before day's end. Here's a link to a photo gallery on The Herald-Dispatch web site. When I worked at the H-D before they eliminated my job and sent me packing after 30 years, nine months and 1 day (but who's counting?), I worked with several people who covered the collapse that night and in the days afterward. They told some stories. And on various anniversaries, I talked with people who survived the collapse and some civil defense people who worked the scene.

The collapse was on a Friday night. I remember sitting a stack of corn in the corn crib by our barn on Ohio Route 7 the next day thinking about those events, and the following day my family drove past the site on the Ohio side. The roadway slanted down from the pier into the river. My eyes fixed on the center line going down into the water.

I lived across the Ohio River from a factory where many Ohioans worked. I remember where they parked their cars and whose yard they walked through to take motorboat rides across the Ohio to work. When they got to the other side, a truck from the plant would come to pick them up. And at the end of the shift, the truck would bring them back.

The pickup site on the West Virginia side was at the plant's barge dock. When a barge was at the dock, the motorboats would go around it on the downriver side. One night, a boat went around the barge on the upriver side. My memory is sketchy, but I think the current pulled the boat under the barge, and two or three men drowned. Technically they were not victims of the bridge collapse, but their deaths were connected to it.

And that's about it for this year.

One more thing, as usual. More than one person told me about a reporter from the New York Times who was there the day after the collapse, and he was a world-class jerk, thinking the entire recovery effort should cater to his needs. Dave McGuire, my former editor who was as good an on-the-job teacher as a young reporter could want, told me he was on the Ohio side when this reporter approached an older woman. He asked her if the bridge had ever worried her. She said, yes. The reporter asked if she had ever noticed anything that made her doubt its safety. Yes, she said. The reporter glared at her and asked in an angry voice, "You had reason to believe the bridge was unsafe and you didn't report it?" When he did that, a big brawny local guy got between them and said, "I don't know how you treat women where you come from, but around here we treat them with respect."

And around that time someone from West Virginia got off a boat and asked if that reporter was causing as much trouble on the Ohio side as he had on the other side earlier in the day.

Dave could tell this story a lot better than I ever could. I wish he were around to tell it one more time.

Silver Bridge, part 2

2011-12-15T11:29:00.000-05:00

I just put a story on the Silver Bridge collapse and the upcoming book on it on The State Journal web site ... with a photo of Adam standing beside the Silver Bridge model at the Point Pleasant River Museum.

Dec. 15, 1967

2011-12-15T05:59:00.000-05:00

Forty-four years ago today, the Silver Bridge linking Point Pleasant, W.Va., with Kanauga, Ohio, collapsed into the Ohio River, taking the lives of 46 people who were on it.

Here is a short piece I wrote about it at my place of former employment.

It's not 6 a.m. yet, and I'm getting the boys ready to get on the school bus in a little bit (it comes at 6:05 to 6:10 a.m.).

The photo is something I just now took of a postcard on my dining room table. The postcard comes from the Point Pleasant River Museum.

More later today, after work. Stay tuned.

Hauling crude by barge

2011-12-12T20:08:00.000-05:00

Here's more on the plan by Marathon Petroleum to refine crude oil from Ohio's Utica shale at its Catlettsburg, Ky., refinery. Part of the plan is the possibility of trucking oil to Marathon terminals in the Steubenville, Ohio, area and transporting it by barge to Catlettsburg.

Ice? No thanks.

2011-12-11T22:23:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, a fellow in LaCrosse, Wisc., took a photo of small bits of ice on the Upper Mississippi River and posted them on Flickr. If I remember winters correctly, here around Mile 310 we normally don't see ice until January.

I prefer it that way.

Late afternoon / early evening at Big Sandy harbor

2011-12-11T12:17:00.000-05:00

A few pics I got yesterday evening right before and after the sun set at the mouth of the Big Sandy River, one of the busiest places on the Ohio.

Two news items on a Saturday

2011-12-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot going on the with the development of shale gas and shale liquids in eastern Ohio. Now, the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Canton, Ohio, is about to refine shale oil from Ohio. And some of that oil could find its way to the Marathon refinery at Catlettsburg, Ky., meaning the finished products could be loaded on barges for delivery to terminals along the Ohio River.

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One group has ranked the Ohio River as the third most polluted body of water in the USA.

Some stuff in the news

2011-12-09T10:27:00.001-05:00

I've been under the weather the past few days. Someone gave me the worst cold I've had in years.But there's a blog to write, so let's check out a few Ohio River-related news items.

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Louisville seems to have a problem with its bridges. The Sherman-Minton Bridge is closed until March while some cracks are repaired, and now the Kennedy Bridge also has problems with cracks and such, according to The Courier-Journal. reports that one joint in the roadway even causes flat tires and bent rims.

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Meanwhile, the 106-year-old Market Street Bridge in West Virginia's Northern Panhandle has re-opened after it was repaired and repainted. And it has a set of lights that's supposed to look pretty good at night. It's another reason I need to get up there someday when money and time are on my side. Lately, it's been more time than money.,

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A lot of folks in the river towing industry don't want media attention. Perhaps they think they don't need it. After all, they don't sell their services to the general public, so way attract attention? It used to be that I could get comments from them when needed, but that slowly changed over the years.

Or it could bed that a lot of media reporters can't get some things right, which much frustrate some folks in th industry. At least I know the difference between a tugboat and a towboat, or between a lock and a dam. And I don't confuse the terms barge, tow and towboat.

But maybe the industry has to make its case known if it wants to see the locks and dams on navigable waterways kept in good repair.

Here, they were interviewed by NPR for a piece on the need for upgrades to the navigation infrastructure.

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Next week -- Dec. 15 -- is the 44th anniversary of the Silver Bridge collapse, and a book is in the works about the event.

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Will the towns along the lower river ever dry out?

Towboat graffiti artist

2011-12-07T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've known a certain person for more than 10 years, maybe closer to 20, and I never knew until recently that we both have family links to the Ohio River. In a message to her, I mentioned a certain towboat that one of her relatives has been on. This was her reply. I took out names and places to protect her identity.

Funny you should mention the (boat). (A few) summers ago I went with (relative) on a (company) business trip to (state) to a barge building facility and a shipyard where the (boat) was about 1/3 finished. (Relative) had geared me up with steel toed boots, a nomex jumpsuit and a hard hat. We went on the (boat) (still on dry land) and an engineer handed me a hunk if chalk. Said I could write anything I wanted on her walls and they put the insulation over it. What a fun graffiti filled day!!! So, whenever you see the (boat), you'll know all my drawings and name are all over her walls!

I haven't seen the boat for a few weeks now, but when I do, I'll be wondering what's on those walls under the insulation.

And I'll wonder what hidden secrets other boats out there have.

Sunday afternoon

2011-12-04T18:53:00.000-05:00

We went out to look around the river today. Not a whole lot was there, but we did see some boats moving barges.

At 311 Fleet.

At the mouth of the Big Sandy.

And back at 311.

Simulator upgraded

2011-12-03T13:12:00.000-05:00

The pilot simulator at the Point Pleasant River Museum has been upgraded, and a further upgrade is coming in February 2012, the Point Pleasant Register reports.

I need to get up there soon, but I'm reluctant to show my face there until I finish a couple of overdue thank-you notes. Maybe I should just sit down and write them now.

119 years ago today (updated)

2011-12-02T11:23:00.001-05:00

According to Norfolk Southern Corp., on this day in 1892, the first railroad bridge over the Ohio River at Kenova, W.Va., was completed.

The bridge is on a main line that connects the port of Norfolk and the coalfields of southern West Virginia with points north, including Chicago. Since completion of the Heartland Corridor project a year ago, a lot of double-stacked container trains have been moving over this bridge each day.

The Kenova bridge is at about Mile 316.

One more thing: A world record setting train crossed this bride on Nov. 15, 1967. A 500-car coal train pulled by five locomotives left Williamson, W.Va., and crossed this bridge on its way to Portsmouth, Ohio. It was said the last car on the train started moving several minutes after the front of the train did. Whether that record still stands, I don't know.

UPDATE: Being more curious about the word "first" in the NS announcement, I checked one of my old reference books. It says the present bridge, the one in the picture above, opened in 1913. Where the "first" bridge was, I don't know. It may have been about a half mile above the existing bridge, and horizontal clearance in the channel may have been wider, but I need to check that out some more with better reference materials than what I have on the book shelf next to my computer.

I checked the two closest railroad bridges. The Sciotoville bridge, about 33 miles downstream, was finished in 1917. That's a big bridge that has an interesting history of its own. The Point Pleasant brige, about 51 miles upstream, opened in 1907.

I got to wondering once how the tax people and the corporate people assess the value of such a bridge. And I wondered how difficult it would be for a private entity such as a railroad to build such a bridge today, given the regulatory and legal climate.

Three news items

2011-11-29T19:38:00.000-05:00

As if folks on the lower Ohio didn't have enough to deal with in March and April, it looks like the river will crest above flood stage this week. Check the last paragraph.

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Here is one of the most detailed accounts of a coal barge striking a bridge pier that I've read in a daily newspaper in a long, long time.

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Not that there would have been much doubt, as construction on the power plant at the Meldahl Locks and Dam has started, but the power line connecting the plant to the grid has been approved by the appropirate Ohio agency.

Two boats on a Sunday

2011-11-29T01:00:00.000-05:00

By the time I got to the mouth of the Kanawha River on Sunday afternoon, the M/V Mary Harter had already backed out and was pushing against the current to go upriver.

The Harter had to stay over against the West Virginia bank until the Lilli Marlene of O-Kan Marine Repair had passed. The Lilli Marlene had the oddest tow I've seen in a while -- six wide and two long.

Perhaps this is the place I'm supposed to say I should bill the world's largest retailer for using a photo of one of its trucks on my blog, but I won't.

Fog

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

I was up in the Point Pleasant, W.Va., area Sunday afternoon. The return trip to Huntington started clear but grew foggy. I tried getting a photo of the O. Nelson Jones below Point Pleasant. When I pulled the car off the road, I wanted to get a shot of the Jones passing through low-lying fog. By the time I was in place, the fog wasn't there.

When we got to the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, we drove to the end of the downstream fishing areas to see if there were any boats approaching the locks in the fog. No such luck, but the fog was hanging heavy on the river as a light rain fell. I walked 30 feet back to the car to get my camera and an umbrella to protect it. In that 60-foot round trip, the fog had covered the mooring cells below me and my view of the dam above me. I did manage to get a couple of shots of the guidewall in the fog and how the fog seemed to curve over the hill between the locks and the dam.

We made one stop on the way home, at about Mile 294. Adam said he saw the Oliver C. Shearer in the fog. We knew it was the Shearer because we could see the stern of the boat and its huge stacks. But the stacks and the stern were about all we could see. I tried getting a shot, but the Shearer was close to the West Virginia shore and trees were in the way. A few seconds later, as I was putting the camera away, Adam said, “And it’s disappeared into the fog.”

After that, it was too dark and too foggy to see if any other boats were on the river. I really wish I could have gotten that shot of the Shearer.

Gas boom

2011-11-27T09:20:00.000-05:00

Drilling for gas in the Marcellus shale formation is a big deal in northern West Virginia. For an update on how big, check out this story about what's happening in and around the Ohio River town of New Martinsville.

2011-11-27T09:01:00.000-05:00

Has it really been two years since the problems at the Markland Locks and Dam between Cincinnati and Louisville began? According to this story from The Associated Press, it has. But, the story says, everything should be back to normal soon.

Early last year you had big problems at both Markland and Greenup. The story notes that many of the locks on the Ohio have exceeded their design life and need work, but the money isn't there. That's the problem with infrastructure that people see as mainly benefitting bulk cargo carriers. A lot of people think they have no dog in this fight, so there's no urgency to find the money to work on these things. Until the things fail, that is.

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Here's a piece that gives one or two paragraphs each on ghost towns in Indiana -- places that once existed or thrived but now are forgotten or nearly so. This particular piece talks about a town called Enterprise and the original Leavenworth. According to the article, after a flood the people of Leavenworth moved their town to higher ground and kept the name.

As I read this, it reminded me of some ghost towns in my area. Near the village of Athalia, Ohio, about 20 miles above Huntington, there was a community called Haskelville or Haskelleville or something like that. It was abandoned after a flood in the 1880s, I think. Today it's the site of a fruit orchard, I think. I have to phrase it that way because I'm not sure of the exact location.

If you've road "Afloat on the Ohio" by Reuben Gold Thwaites, you've read about how he wanted to photograph some crackers (his word) in the Gallia County, Ohio, community of Rosebud. If you know where to look, you can find some houses, singlewides and doublewides where Rosebud is/was.

I've been told of others along the Ohio -- not like Rosebud, but more like old Leavenworth -- that no longer exist, but in a quick Web search this morning I can't find anything about them. That may have to wait until another day.

But there are others inland, a few rides away from the river, that may have been communities in the days of horses and buggies but now are pretty much forgotten, such as Polkadotte (pronounced Pokey Dot) in Lawrence County, Ohio. And there are some that are near ghost towns, whose locations are marked by the remains of an old country store or a post office that has long since closed.

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And a couple of bridges were closed for a few hours this week after being hit by barges during high water. The bridge at Cairo was hit on Thursday, and the one at Pomeroy, Ohio, was hit on Saturday. No structural damage was done in either case, and both are open again.

A few minutes at the mouth of the Kanawha

2011-11-26T21:50:00.002-05:00

I saw a few boats and some barges -- maybe a hundred barges? -- in the lower three miles of the Kanawha River today.

First, there was the Dr. Edwin H. Welch sitting next to the right descending bank around Mile 1.

Right above it was the James W. Buky. I was able to get some more pictures of the Buky from the hill above the river.

And a high shot of the Welch, too.

One thing I noticed was a fleeting area for barges between miles 2 and 3. You can see two boats in this picture. The one on the right is the Nell, I believe. I don't know what the other one was, but it had to be an AmherstMadison boat.

Because of the angle and the resolution of the photo, it's kind of hard to tell how many barges are here, but I would say there are between 35 and 40.

The thing about all these barges is where the coal in them came from and where it's going. Coal is a two-way traffic on the Kanawha. A lot of coal comes from the Ohio, with much if not most of it ending up at the Amos power plant ~~above Mile 35~~ at about Mile 40. Amos, by the way, is the largest coal-fired power plant in these parts. Between the mouth of the Kanawha and Amos is the Winfield Locks and Dam at Mile 31. (Remember, mile markers on the Ohio start at Pittsburgh and increase as you go down the river. On the Kanawha and most other rivers, mile markers start at the mouth and work back up). The main lock at Winfield can accommodate a boat and nine jumbo barges, so a 15-barge coal tow on the Ohio has to be broken up into two parts to be taken to Amos.

But a lot of coal comes down the Kanawha to the fleet at Point Pleasant. There it's assembled into 15-barge tows for Ohio River boats. The thing I wondered today was which fleeting area is for coal coming out of the Kanawha and which was for coal going up into the Kanawha.

Is one fleeting area dedicated to upbound coal and one to downbound? I seriously doubt that's the case week in and week out, but it was something I wondered about as I saw all that coal today and wondered which barges were going where.

M/V or mv.

2011-11-26T11:14:00.000-05:00

To finish up something from this past spring, I've gone to the old usage of M/V for towboats, as in motor vessel.

I've seen mv. used in some places over the past three decades, such as the Waterways Journal. I prefer it, as it's shorter and less obtrusive than M/V. But I've found that people who prefer mv. don't mind M/V, but some people who prefer M/V don't like mv. and have a bad reaction to it.

It's not all that important to me, so I went with what the readers seemed to prefer. So it's M/V.

Ups and downs of a sometimes dreary week

2011-11-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

One of the nice things about the Internet is that you get to meet people you otherwise would not come in contact with. That happened again these past two weeks when a towboat captain contacted me to ask about something. We have a mutual acquaintance, and we were able to chat about some things.

This has not been a good week for me to get on the river and get photos. Because of downpours earlier in the week, the river has been running high. The water is muddy, and it's over some of my best shooting spots. On top of that, the sky has been milky, the trees are bare and the water is muddy. I tried getting a photo of the O. Nelson Jones as it passed the Miller, Ohio, area on Thanksgiving day, but it just didn't work out.

On top of that, there's not been a lot of traffic around here. I checked the vessel locations site yesterday afternoon, and there was not one boat reported downbound in the Greenup pool. That's not right, but if it has to happen, it might as well be when I can't get to the river bank in daylight and with decent backgrounds to shoot against.

I have to go back up the river later today. Maybe we'll see something then. If things work out, I might even see the boat of the captain of my new acquaintance. You never know.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T23:11:00.000-05:00

Of all the holidays we have -- secular and/or religious -- Thanksgiving has long been my favorite. I've never had to work on Thanksgiving. I've worked New Year's, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day and Christmas, but I've never had to work Thanksgiving.

But some people do. Someone has to run the power plants, the steel mills and the coke ovens. Someone has to take the tolls on the bridge. Someone has to patrol the highways. And someone has to drive the ambulance. One passed by my house tonight, red lights flashing.

So here's to the people out on the river, beside the river and along the river who are giving up their holiday so the rest of us can enjoy ours.

Thank you.

(Photo The M/V Charleston prepares to pass the Kyger Creek Power Plant, foreground, and the Gen. James Gavin Power Plant, background, at Cheshire, Ohio, along the Ohio River on Thanksgiving night 2009).

Rise coming

2011-11-22T18:56:00.000-05:00

The river forecast here at Huntington, W.Va., is for a rise of 13 feet between now and Friday night. I know we've had a lot of rain ...

Fatality on the river

2011-11-22T18:50:00.002-05:00

A deckhand working on the Janis R. Brewer died Monday night when the boat struck a wall at the Cannelton Locks and Dam. Details here.

Two boats at Kenova

2011-11-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

I wanted to try some nighttime photography, so I went to Virginia Point Park at Kenova, W.Va., shortly after sundown yesterday to get some boats all lit up. But the Big Sandy harbor was pretty quiet. I did see the James R. Morehead and the Bruce D, though, so I got off a few shots while I could.

Cincinnati bridge photo

2011-11-18T20:03:00.000-05:00

If you want to see a really cool photo of the Roebling suspension bridge in Cincinnati -- or from the bridge -- check out this one.

Trying out a camera phone

2011-11-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

Mobile phones have cameras, you know. What you may not have heard is that some people in the communications industry expect mobile phones to replace point-and-shoot digital cameras in the next few years. To me that's not a good thing. If I lose a point-and-shoot, I don't lose all my contacts and such.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a mobile phone to the mouth of the Guyandotte River to see how it works. Here are some images I got.

And one more. This is the wall on my cubicle at work.

The poster was made from a photo Adam and I took last October of the M/V Detroit coming down the Ohio River at Addison, Ohio, with the Kyger Creek and Gavin power plants in the background. The calendar is something I made. Each month, I take one of my river photos appropriate to that month and make my own calendar page. Miss November is one I got at the mouth of a creek on Nov. 11, 2010. I haven't decided what image to use for December.

And the piece of paper with something blurred has a note to remind me of something I can't seem to remember.

Science and trash

2011-11-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

I had to go to the store for some vittles this evening, so I took a short side trip to one of my favorite spots along the Ohio River on the way. I was looking at various things when I noticed the waves breaking on shore near me. The wind was coming diagonally from the river, toward me with the dropoff in front of me.

As I stood there, I watched the waves pushed by the wind until they grew higher and broke. Then I remembered how a wave in water will move until it comes to a spot where the depth of the water is less than the amplitude of the wave. When that happens, the wave breaks. So even though the water was muddy, I could locate the dropoff at this spot by watching the waves.

And while I was there, I looked at some of the litter in the water. You can tell a lot about the people who frequent a spot by the litter they leave behind. For example, on the road where I live, people drink a lot of Wendy's soft drinks, bottled water and Bud Light. At this spot on the river, they forget the Wendy's and the water and drink plenty of alcohol while they fish, although some litterbugs enjoy local soft drink refreshments.

Three things in the news

2011-11-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

The Marietta, Ohio, area is getting a couple of new river gauges. These will measure more than river depth. They'll also measure velocity and volume of flow.

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Is turbulence from the hydroelectric plant at the McAlpine Locks and Dam causing severe shoreline erosion at Clarksville, Ind.? Some locals think so. They do know they don't have the money to fix the problem.

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Here's a piece on what happens to local businesses when communities have to do without bridges they've come to rely on. It's in the Courier-Journal's opinion section.

This past week ...

2011-11-12T11:23:00.000-05:00

... wasn't my best for being down by the river. The leaves are gone and thanks to the end of daylight savings time, by the time I get close to home after work it's pretty much dark already.

I did get a few pictures, though. And while they're not going into my Best of the Best folder, they're okay.

The Amber Brittany is one of the prettiest boats on the Ohio River, partly because of its design and partly because of its color scheme.

And two deckhands of the Brittany discuss something before the boat pulls out of the Campbell fleet below Point Pleasant, W.Va., and heads down the river.

My favorite bridge silhouetted by the post-sunset sky ...

And in light and shadow from the morning sun ...

The autumn colors were pretty dull around here. About the only place you'll find any decent colors on leaves are along the river, such as this sidewalk at Harris Riverfront Park in Huntington, W.Va.

And you might find some color once you leave the park if a classic VW Beetle makes a left turn a block ahead of you.

I saw a couple of boats on the Kanawha River this week. There was the Iron Duke upbound...

And the Dr. Edwin H. Welch downbound.

I didn't see the Welch until it has passed a good shooting spot, and I didn't have time to wait for it to get to the next. Oh well.

The Marathon on the Kanawha again

2011-11-10T08:06:00.000-05:00

So I had to do a couple of things at work yesterday, and as I walked back to my desk, I looked out the window and saw the new towboat Marathon coming up the Kanawha River. I grabbed my camera bag and told my supervisor I would be back in 10 minutes.

"Another boat?" she asked.

I got these shots of the Marathon as it approached and tied up to a terminal across the river from where I work.

Later I looked out a window on the other side of the building and saw the Marathon faced up on a barge and pointing downriver. And a little bit after that, I saw it heading up the Kanawha pushing one barge. I checked vessel locations later and saw it locking through Marmet. And I thought of some old Ohio River boat workers I'm acquainted with who made as few trips up the Kanawha, sometimes as far as a town called Hugheston.

For a while, I pondered chasing the Marathon up the Kanawha to get some pictures of it in the Marmet pool, but by the time I got out of work, it was dark outside, and raining. In other words, not worth the time and trouble for the images I'd probably get.

As of 8 a.m. today, the Marathon is in the Winfield pool, probably near my office, but given other things I have to do on the way in to work, I probably won't see it.

I don't know why Marathon sometimes sends a big boat up the Kanawha when it has smaller ones that can make the trip, but on this day I didn't care.

I have a couple more photos from the Kanawha this week that I might post if I can get the quality right. I did minimal editing on these photos of the Marathon, but the ones I got the other day of the Iron Duke will take more work. As a former coworkers explained to me once, the camera had photographer problems. I hate it when I'm taking pictures at night and forget to reset the thing for daylight shooting.

Wanted: A history of Dravo

2011-11-08T20:08:00.000-05:00

Despite my attempts to find a more honest line of work, I remain employed in the news business, where I have been employed in one capacity or another for most of the past 36 1/2 years. News people love anniversaries, and there may be one coming up that I would like to write about, but I’m having trouble finding enough good information. Thus, I’m asking for help.

Tonight on the drive home from work I got to thinking that we should be coming up on the 30^th anniversary of the closing of the Dravo shipyards near Pittsburgh. According to shipbuildinghistory.com, Dravo closed its Pittsburgh operations in 1983, although the last towboat – the William F. Plettner – may have come out in late 1982.

I’ve been looking around for a good history of Dravo, but I’ve not found one. I’ve found bits and pieces, but I need a good comprehensive history. I know I need to dig through the Waterways Journal for 1982 and 1983. And I should probably check the Pittsburgh papers for those years, too. But I need a solid history, one that tells things like how the Viking came to be, and whatever happened to Dravo, Dravo Mechling and their successor companies.

I’ll need to see what the Inland Rivers Library in Cincinnati has, and there may be one or two other sources around.

But if anyone who reads this knows of a good history of Dravo or if you know of any specific libraries that would have such material, please let me know. I’m not asking to borrow anything, and I’m not looking to spend a lot of money collecting stuff. I just need to be pointed in the right direction.

Avoiding the rush

2011-11-07T06:05:00.000-05:00

Here's how a cardiologist in Louisville who has a practice in Indiana avoids a lot of the problems that have come with the closure of the Sherman Minton Bridge.

A tip of the hat to Louisville-area resident Joseph Schneid.

And while we're at it, if you want to see some of his pictures of riverboats in the Louisville area, check out his Flickr photostream. I'm particularly jealous of his photos of the M/V Erna E. Honeycutt.

M/V Hoosier State

2011-11-06T08:55:00.001-05:00

Saturday afternoon, I dropped Adam off at his grandmother's house to spend the night. They hadn't seen each other for a while, so Adam wanted to spend the weekend with her. On the way back to Huntington, I had my older son, Joey, with me. As much as Adam loves the Ohio River, Joey doesn't. He tolerates my and Adam's fascination with it. But sometimes just barely.

After we left grandma's house, I told Joey I was stopping at Point Pleasant to get pictures of the Hoosier State if it was still there. And it was. As we crossed the Bartow Jones Bridge over the Kanawha River, I saw the Hoosier State lightboat (without barges) pointed toward the Ohio. So I parked the car at the foot of the bridge and ran up the sidewalk, hoping to get a good shot of this relatively new AEP boat without barges.

I could have saved my heart the stress. The Hoosier State was moving along lazily. In face, it was about to be overtaken by AmherstMadison's boat, the Drema G. Woods. You can see them here, with the Nell in the background making tow.

I didn't know if Joe Kincaid were in the pilothouse of the Hoosier State and if he saw me, because the boat took its good sweet time moving toward the Ohio. I got some decent shots, considering the boat was either lit up by the warm tones of the setting sun or was in the shade.

I had been up on the bridge for a while when my phone rang. It was Joey, sitting in the car. "You know, you can come down," he said. I explained that I was trying to get some good shots of a slow-moving boat and I would be down when the boat was gone.

Lucky for me, Joey called when the Hoosier State was at a bad spot for shooting. Near the bridge is a utility line of some sort that crosses the river below the sidewalk level. It can get in the way of some decent shots.

As I was waiting for the Hoosier State to get closer, the Drema G. Woods exited the Kanawha to my right, so I got this shot.

The Hoosier State is 48 feet wide, and its hull goes nine to nine and a half feet deep in the water. So, it has to push some water out of the way when it moves, creating these waves.

The design of the Hoosier State's pilothouse has a big window in front of the guy doing the steering,and there's a gap in the center console, allowing him a pretty good view of the front of the boat below him.

But where is he supposed to put his feet when he wants to lean back and take it easy for a few seconds?

As the Hoosier State got closer, it came out of shadow and into the golden sunlight, as you can see in these two pictures.

I saw Joe on the boat as it neared the bridge, and as it went under he shouted up to me that the new AEP boat Mike Weisend was on its way down and should be there in 30 minutes.

We shouted some stuff back and forth before the boat went under the bridge. The last shot I got was of this deckhand.

Down at the car, I bribed Joey with the promise of his favorite sandwich from Subway if he wouldn't complain about my going up the river a few miles to look for the Weisend. He agreed. We went up as far as Cheshire, but we didn't see it. On the way up, we passed the Kyger Creek and Gavin power plants. I told him some about the pollution equipment on them and of how coal-fired plants still leave a lot of stuff behind in the form of coal ash and scrubber sludge that has to be disposed of.

Joey got his sandwich, and I got home to work on editing the pictures. During a Facebook conversation with Joe Kincaid, I was told that some guys on the boat heard sires of emergency vehicles crossing the bridge, and they thought I was as a jumper. I told them the sirens came from a police car and a firetruck escorting a pickup full of cheerleaders. And it's not like I haven't been mistaken for a jumper before.

So that was my excitement for the evening. My one regret is that after the Hoosier Stat exited the Kanawha and as I was crossing the Silver Memorial Bridge, I could have gotten a good shot of the Hoosier State lightboat with Point Pleasant in the background. But the light was fading, my camera was in its bag and I didn't want to take the time to slow down on the bridge, as the traffic that was a quarter of a mile behind me might not notice the slow speed I would have to be going.

Perhaps someday the opportunity will present itself again.

Sistersville ferry needs money

2011-11-04T20:49:00.000-04:00

The ferry at Sistersville, W.Va., is having some financial problems, and the mayor wants the state Legislature to appropriate some money to keep it going.

For some reason, I can't load a photo with this entry, but there's a photo on the link.

That photo one I took back in July. I posted it on Facebook, and we got a conversation going about ferries on the Ohio. Here is one of my comments about the Sistersville ferry in particular:

Mark, the guy who collected the money on the Sistersville ferry said he was glad to be back on the river. He said they ran onily two days last week. While I was on the ferry, I talked with a local (a Marshall grad, by coincidence) who said whenever he has an out-of-town visitor, they always want to ride the ferry.

Coal tar removal

2011-11-01T19:51:00.000-04:00

Some coal tar that has been in the Ohio River along the bank in Hancock County, W.Va., north of Wheeling is being removed. Details are scant, though.

No cigar this time, either

2011-11-01T19:42:00.002-04:00

This evening I saw a scene I have wanted to photograph for some time now, but the boat was too far away and moving uncharacteristically fast. The traffic lights worked against me, too. By the time I got to where I wanted to be, the boat was in the wrong spot. If I'd only seen it five minutes earlier. Oh well.

Up the river, into the evening

2011-11-01T00:01:00.001-04:00

A Dravo 3200 (or Steel series ... whatever is appropriate), the evening sun, the Ohio River, a loaded tow ... always a good shot.

Adam and I have this debate going about which Dravo boats make better pictures -- the 3200 series or the Viking series. We're thinking about a series of blog entries where different boats face off to see who is more photogenic. Sort of like a rap battle without the profanity and the beat.

I'll not say who favors which series. Yet.

Utility poles

2011-10-30T20:35:00.000-04:00

I was standing on a guardrail post along a narrow section of West Virginia Route 2 along the Ohio River trying to get a photo of something when I saw how the utility poles looked in the setting sun.

And I got to thinking about how there are people who are fascinated by these things. They'll look at this and tell what type or style of pole it is, what insulators are used and what voltage or wattage is carried on the wires. Some people are nuts about trains, some about river boats and some about utility poles. Half a lifetime ago I would have thought such people were nuts. Today I think it's great.

I guess they still call these things insulators -- the things at the top of the pole where the wires are.

A hundred years or so ago, when I was a small boy, we would find green glass insulators in the woods or along roadsides every now and then. Later, I heard there were collectors who paid good money for the things we chucked aside as cute but useless. Will collectors go after the things on modern utility poles? Who knows?

Five things

2011-10-29T19:34:00.000-04:00

When I was growing up along the Ohio River many decades ago, my parents had a dislike for two types of people. First, they would get agitated when they heard Gypsies were seen in our area. They ran a store, and they feared that a band of Gypsies would come in and steal everything they could stick in their clothes.

Second was people who lived on shantyboats. This was kind of odd, as my mother's family lived on at least two boats, and I have a photo of one of them. The thing about shantyboat people was that they helped themselves to what your grew in your garden along the river, my parents said. The rule of thumb was the first two or three rows of your garden were there for the shantyboat people to steal.

I've seen one shantyboat in my time, but it's either out of sight or gone now.

If you're in the Marietta, Ohio, area in the near future, the Ohio River Museum has taken possession of a shantyboat and is restoring it. That's another reason I need to plan a trip up that way soon.

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The Corps of Engineers is repairing problems with the Ohio and Mississippi River levees at Cairo, Ill., following deficiencies that came to light during the big flood this past spring.

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Rising Sun, Ind., isn't one of the larger communities along the river, but it's fighting to keep its riverfront casino business thriving. Next up: a new hotel.

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Tom Cruise is shooting a movie in Sewickley, Pa. He spent part of his youth in Louisville, by the way.

Here is Huntington, we had Matthew McConaughey for a while during filming of "We Are Marshall," and Jamie Oliver took over the kitchens of an elementary school and a high school for a season of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution." Two of my kids, who attended Huntington High while he was there, didn't like the changes to the menu.

Oh, Huntington is the hometown of actor Brad Dourif. He played Wormtongue in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Among other roles, he saved the ship from the Kazon on "Star Trek: Voyager," and he was a deputy who got on Gene Hackman's bad side in "Mississippi Burning."

A side note to that side note: A lawyer I know in Chesapeake, Ohio, which is across the river from Huntington, was one of the FBI agents on whom the story "Mississippi Burning" was based. I interviewed him for the Huntington paper way back when about the real story of how the FBI handled t he investigation.

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And I think I got some decent pictures of a towboat lit up by the setting sun this evening. And this time,I had a clean memory card and a fully charged battery.

A fine boat on a dreary day

2011-10-28T20:48:00.000-04:00

A previous entry had me whining about what a terrible day Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011, was for getting pictures along the Ohio River. It didn't help that I forgot to erase my camera's memory card and charge the battery before leaving home. I didn't realize what mistakes those were until I was driving down Ohio Route 7 just above Addison. I looked over my shoulder, and there was the O. Nelson Jones headed my way.

I got off a couple of shots there that weren't totally blurry and mal-exposed because of a weak battery and limited card space.

One thing about these pictures, especially the first one, is worth noting. That dark cloud at the very top of the picture isn't a naturally occurring cloud. It's vapor from the cooling towers at the Gavin power plant, which is out of the picture and off to the right. Yesterday was so humid and chilly that the vapor from the cooling towers hung low in the air and drifted off to the east in thick clouds.

I had a few minutes, so I went down to the Point Pleasant area to get a few pics of the O. Nelson Jones making a hard turn to the left to enter the Kanawha. I wasn't sure that was its destination, but I figured from the direction the boat was heading and the barges it was pushing, it was probably headed to an AmherstMadison dock on the Kanawha near the mouth. On the first part at least I was right. Here's the O. Nelson Jones turning up the Kanawha.

And here it approaching my position.

The light wasn't good. It got better after my battery died and my card was full. Figures.

I was kicking myself because there are few places along the river to get as close to this particular boat as this spot is. Next time I'll be more prepared.

Blennerhassett Island Bridge

2011-10-27T21:04:00.001-04:00

I've mentioned the Blennerhassett Island Bridge near Parkersburg, W.Va., several times. Today I was in the area, and I found a spot where I could get shots from land.

Photographers are supposed to be a bunch that are always griping about something, so I might as well play the part:

The sky was gray because we had rain all day. At least I got there in the only 30-minute window we had without a drizzle or a downpour.

On the Ohio side, where I was, the bridge is built over a place that loads stuff like sand and gravel and similar materials onto trucks, or from offloads from trucks to barges. I don't know. I only know the ground on both sides of the bridge was filled with semis and rocks instead of flowers and unicorns.

At most spots along the state road where you could see the bridge, there were big, ugly overhead utility lines in the way.

I didn't know it at the time, but my camera battery was dying, and I didn't have a spare. When my battery gets weak, my pictures get blurry. This was the one gripe that I have where it was totally under my control.

So here goes with six pictures anyway.

If I can get back up there next spring on a day with blue skies and green leaves and the scent of freshly cut grass in the air, maybe someone who lives near the bridge will let me use their front porch as a shooting spot. That;s my fantasy, at least.

For the record, the Blennerhassett Island Bridge is what's known as a network tied arch design. If you look at the top picture, you see that the cables hanging down from the arch and supporting the bridge deck are diagonal, not vertical as in most arch bridges over the Ohio River. The diagonal cables and other design features allowed engineers to cut way back on the amount of steel used in the bridge structure.

I like it.

Leftovers, Part 3

2011-10-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

From September.

Making tow at Kenova, W.Va.

There's only one sign at Harris Riverfront Park at Huntington, W.Va., to tell you where you are, and it's looking pretty ratty what it it being under water a coupe of times a year for about 30 years.

And it's off topic, but I liked this 1955 or '56 Cadillac I saw on a used car lot.

Mothman? Please.

2011-10-25T20:13:00.000-04:00

I'm going to commit an act of heresy for someone who grew up in the Gallipolis, Ohio - Point Pleasant, W.Va. area. I am old enough to remember the Mothman, and I really don't care to hear or read much about it anymore.

The Mothman could have been one or more of several things. In some sightings, it could have been a prankster in a suit. I've even heard a name used.

A lot of folks note that the Mothman's last sighting was before the Silver Bridge fell into the Ohio River on Dec. 15, 1967. It could be that the person who dressed up as the Mothman was on the bridge. Or he had a family member or a friend who died when the bridge went down.

Call me a curmudgeon, but count me as one person not fascinated by or really that interested in the Mothman legend.