Monday, February 15, 2010

A snowy morning


I had to drive from Huntington WV to Ironton OH to talk to someone about a job possibility, either now or in the future. It just would have to pour down the snow. But it did make for some decent pictures, even if ...


Remember kids, if you turn the autofocus off to get one picture, be sure to turn it back on when you take a different picture. Otherwise what could have been a nice picture of a towboat passing downtown Huntington on a snowy day will turn out blurry.


This photo, too, is a bit out of focus, but it makes the point. The 6th Street bridge (techncially, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge, but a lot of locals prefer the old name) is usually green except for the part where the 16-year-old paint job is fading. Today, it was white.


This was U.S. 52 in Lawrence County OH between South Point and Coal Grove. At this point, snow was coming down and winds were picking it off the hills and blowing it around some more.


But you could see the two bridges connecting Ohio with Ashland KY. I didn't see a lot of snow accumulating on them.


Here's the Ironton-Russell Bridge, which turns 88 this year. You can see some snow on it. The sidewalk is closed, so you can't walk up on it. The ramp in the foreground leads from downtown Ironton up onto the bridge. You have to make a 90-degree left turn to get onto the bridge itself and go to Kentucky.

On the way home, I crossed the Nick J. Rahall II Bridge (known locally as the West 17th Street bridge, again by local who prefer old names). I saw an Ingram line-haul boat down at the barge fleeting area. I shot more than a dozen photos with a wide-angle lens hoping to get one decent one. The bridge is a two-lane job that connects two four-lane highways. (It's a long story. Don't ask.). There's no sidewalk, and it has an unprotected berm of maybe two feet in width.  I had to shoot through the passenger window while driving as slowly as traffic allowed to get this shot.


I'm not certain of the male of the boat, but judging from the boat locator on the Ingram site, it might be the mv. Ocie Clark.

Anyway, that was my morning.