Oh man, what a good day I had yesterday. Even burs and falling through thin ice couldn’t make it any less than awesome.

So I went to Nicollet Island again, and I drove straight up to the north end of the island by the old bridge to Boom Island, but instead of going straight to the bridge, I climbed down the little bluff there to the river bank, and got a good look at the local geology.

The first layer of bedrock under Minneapolis is limestone, which varies from 5-20 feet thick. Under that is a very soft sandstone. Downtown Minneapolis lays the foundations of it skyscrapers on the thick part of the limestone. There are also lots of tunnels under the river, beneath the limestone, in the sandstone layer. The sand is very fine and white.

So as I climbed down the bluff, there was an overhang of limestone, which left a nice little bit of a cave there, and there was clear evidence that people have been making use of it. It would be foolish to think that I was going to discover anything new. Anyway, down on the bank, there is the usual detritus you find on the banks of the Mississippi, bricks and bottles and bits of steel and concrete from god knows what. There were also slabs of the limestone that had fallen off the bluff. In a couple of thousand years, Nicollet Island will be quite a bit smaller, I think.

So that was cool, and I shot the last few pictures I had on the roll of 3200, then I loaded up a fresh roll of normal ISO 200 colour film and headed down the bank to the bridge.

It was an old train bridge, built in 1901, now just a pedestrian crossing. But I was down on the bank, so I got a look at it from underneath. It has a couple of massive iron girders that span the water, and above that is a large open truss, which together must make it pretty sturdy. The deck is new wood planks over the old wooden beams that sit on the girders. It’s a very lovely bridge, if you’re into that sort of thing, which clearly I am. I got pictures of it from several angles and both banks.

So then I walked down the trail to where the railroad would turn and cross over a curving steel girder bridge on concrete piers to the right bank. It’s quite high there, a good 25 or thirty feet above the water, but there was a way down to the bank again; I suppose there always is. Next to the curved bridge is an older straight bridge on massive black stone piers. That one is still in use; it goes straight across the island and over to the left bank. The old bridge was pretty interesting. Half of it looks original, big iron girders and all, but the other half is new concrete sitting on the old piers. I went a little ways further down the bank, then climbed up the slope to the road. It was getting a little late, as I had to pick up my mom from work at 2:30 and I’d left the house at 1:00.

As I was heading back towards the car, I met a group of hipsters on the disused train bridge, and asked for the time, and it was 2:17, so I just went straight back to the car and everything was fine; I got to her place of work at 2:32. Then I took the black and white film in to the shop, and unfortunately, they do have to send it out, so I don’t get it until the 19th or so.

While I was at the shop, I decided to ask about circular polarisers. The lady said she might have a used one that would fit my lens, and indeed she did, and she said that it was $10, and I said shut up and take my money. I didn’t say that. But I bought it.

On the way home I stopped at Lake Johanna and I fixed the filter on the front of the lens and I took a picture of the lake and the clouds in the sky and the clouds looked really cool.

It was about 50 degrees outside, which is 9 or 10 Celsiuses: viz., it was warm, but people were out on the ice, fishing, and I walked along the ice by the shore, and I saw a couple of small holes in the ice and I reached down to feel how thick the ice was, and it was about an inch thick. I kind of laughed to myself about how crazy the people out in the middle of the lake were, and I headed back towards the beach and my foot went right through the ice.

I was by the shore, so the water was only 6 inches deep, but I got my foot wet. It was funny, though.

P.S.: as I was going back to the car at 2:17, I thought of that line about meeting a group of hipsters on a disused train bridge and laughed a lot. But I mean, they were clearly hipsters. They were wearing skinny jeans and coats and had piercings and one of them had a DSLR and one had a fixed-gear bike. I’m not judging them or saying any of that is bad; they seemed like nice people, it’s just really funny to me.