Walkway Over the Hudson

This morning Martin, my dad, and I went for a walk along the walkway over the hudson. This used to be a railroad bridge that connected Poughkeepsie to Highland but it was abandoned after a fire in 1974. In 2009 it was redone and turned into a pedestrian-only walkway - the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park. At 212 feet tall and 1.28 miles long, it is the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world.

It was quite brisk this morning with temperatures in the 30's ... well below freezing with the windchill on the river. Here's a pic of some of Poughkeepsie with maybe a Catskill mountain or two way off in the distance:



My dad and Martin, starting out:



The Mid-Hudson bridge:



You can actually do a big 7-mile loop where you start in Poughkeepsie and walk over the walkway then follow the old railroad line for a bit and then come back over the mid-hudson bridge and through a bit of Poughkeepsie to end up back where you started from. We opted not to do this because a) it was really cold b) we didn't feel like walking over the mid-hudson bridge since it has cars on it and is not as peaceful and c) we didn't feel like walking on streets in Poughkeepsie. Eventually the Dutchess rail trail will be connected to the walkway on the east side of the river so you can walk a bit beyond the walkway without ending up on the mid-hudson bridge.

Here we are all bundled up:



And here's a picture of the shadow of the bridge which was neat:



For more information on the park, visit http://walkway.org/