Woke up around 2:00 a.m. last night with rain, wild lightning and blast's of thunder all around. Had to get up for awhile and just watch the show going on outside my window. Opened the shades in the living room as well as the back door, grabbed a glass of wine and sat back on the couch and just watched and listened for more than an hour. What a show!  

   It rained off and on all morning so there was no hurry on getting out and about until after lunch time. Went and found the county park where the contra dance will be held this weekend. Looks like it should be a real fun venue to dance at. After that short errand it was off to the visitor center on the north side of the New River Gorge. The whole area is a national park like place and they had a nice visitor center that had displays and movies about the history of the area from millions of years ago until the present. It seems that the 'New' River is actually a very old river, some say the 2nd oldest river in the world. The Nile river being the only one older. But no one knows for sure, so we will just figure it to be older than dirt and leave it at that.

   Many of the displays they had were about the coal mining that took place around this region and it was the reason why any one was here in the first place. Lot's and lots of very high quality bituminous coal was discovered in the cliffs along the river gorge and once the C&O railroad managed to lay tracks into the region, the coal industry just boomed. Lot's of small communities were born and died there along the banks of the new river as new deposits of coal were discovered and then worked out. Now a days it is the tourist trade that supports a lot of the people in this region, though there is still plenty of hard rock coal mining going on in certain spots. There was one coal train that went by this afternoon that had close to 200 full cars in it.

    Of course the main attraction out at the center is the steel arch bridge that spans the gorge and turned what use to be a nearly hour long transit from one side to the other, into little more than a 30 second blip in the day. The bridge is truly a marvel of engineering in both how it was built and the stats it racked up once opened. I'll forgo a bunch of the engineering particulars, but know that when it was completed in 1977 it was the 2nd longest single span arch bridge in the world. (Since then it has dropped to 3rd place). Also; it is the 2nd highest arch bridge in the U.S. at more than 850' above the river. And if that isn't enough, it is also beautiful as the pictures below show.

   Hiked a couple short trails there at the center, climbed up and down enough stairs to span 600 vertical feet, and saw some beautiful views. The park service had one map showing various road trips around the area so I drove the one right under the bridge that would of been the way people got from one side to the other before the new bridge was in place. It was paved now, which was nice, but so narrow and steep that for the most part it was a one-way from the north side to the south. Stopped several times along the way to get different views of the bridge and read a few signs. Really just a pretty little drive all in all. Will try to get out and do a few more short drives tomorrow, especially since it is suppose to be cloudy and rainy again.

   Got back to the trailer around 5:30 and made a little dinner. Started another book and read for a couple hours and then watched the movie 'Iron Man II'. Certainly not as good as the first one, but it was entertaining enough if that is all you are looking for in a movie.

A view of the New River Gorge steel arch bridge from the north side of the gorge. The bridge is made out of 'cor-ten' steel, a specific amalgam of steel that has the property of producing a thin 'veneer' of rust on the exterior surface that then protects the rest of the steel from further rusting. I remember this because the 44' motor life boats I once ran had hulls made out of the same stuff. Of course the Coast Guard still made us paint them.

Another view of the bridge taken from the north side. The bridge has 29 vertical truss like members spaced equally along the length of the structure. They range in height from 28' to more than 200'. What surprised me was that there are no cross member supports on the outside plane of the bridge connecting these members together.

 

Here you have a better view of those vertical truss like members. They have plenty of cross bracing within each frame, but no bracing at all between members. I would of thought in a structure like this with exposure to very high winds and large loads that it would be necessary to add sway bracing in all directions. Apparently not though.

A view of nearly the whole span of the bridge. This was taken from the old truss bridge that use to be the only way across the river for many, many miles in both directions. Here you can really see the lack of sway bracing between the vertical members. Would love to see the calc's they used to design it by. Obviously it was enough without adding anything else to the design.

This view was interesting because it makes the bridge appear like it is simply growing out of the trees on the side of the mountain.

One last view.... The lighting on this one looked nice.

Tons of caterpillers out on the ground, trees and bushes today. A simple 'Tent' catepiller, it is remarkable how beautiful it can be if you can just get close enough to see it.