Portland Waterfront - Bridges and Fall Colors

Carla and I have been getting tired of walking the same routes around the neighborhood; since the Fall weather was fantastic we decided to go to downtown Portland and walk south of the Hawthorne Bridge to see what we might see.

For those of you who don't live in the Portland area, here is where we were. Google knows everything; it has highlighted a number of businesses I've researched in the past few months.

Overview of the Portland Metro Area. Our home in Beaverton is in the southwest part of town.

 We walked from near River Place down past the Marquam Bridge. The Transit Bridge is going in between the Marquam and Ross Island Bridges.

Zoom in on our walk.

We ate an early lunch at home and headed down a bit before noon. As we went through the tunnel we became enveloped in fog. It was much cooler and grayer than the Tron (Beaverton).

Hawthorne Bridge in the mist

The new Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge  is coming along; I catch glimpses of it when I head over the Marquam Bridge. This bridge will be for light rail (to Milwaukie), pedestrians and bicyclers. In the future the Portland Street Car will also use it.

Eastern span Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge

The spans are growing ever closer. Engineers who figure this stuff out are amazing.

 We also saw some nice fall colors on our walk.

South Waterfront

 I've been following photographer Matt Kloskowski for the past few months. A recent article covered Fall photography. I tried to include two of his tips in this picture: use backlight for foliage, and try to get just a glimpse of the sun peaking through.

Trees in the park around the Ira Keller Fountain

 By the time we got back to our car the fog had lifted and I got a brighter picture of the Hawthorne Bridge.

Hawthorne Bridge looking north.