More formally known as the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge, the Stan Span is the new I-70 bridge across the Mississippi River. Connecting Illinois and Missouri, just north of downtown Saint Louis, this bridge is opening to the public this weekend. Today, the bridge was opened to pedestrian and bicycling traffic, tomorrow it opens to cars. Anne and I drove downtown, parked and then took one of the shuttle buses up to the bridge. We walked to Illinois and back.
We could have bicycled the bridge, instead of walking it. Trailnet sponsored a ride this morning, to conquer gephyrophobia, the fear of bridges. We’ve cycled all of the other recent Saint Louis road openings, the Page extension and both halves of the New I-64, but between sleeping in and an overnight dusting of snow, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor this time.
The Stan Span is a cable-stayed bridge and has a main span of 1,500 feet. This makes the Stan Span the third longest main spanned bridge in America, after bridges in Louisiana and South Carolina. It was cold today. It was even colder out over the water. After we walked to Illinois and back we took the shuttle bus back downtown. We grabbed some lunch at the Dubliner. During my haste in taking off my coat, my camera slipped out and dropped on the floor. I took this photo of Anne to check to see if the camera was still working. I think that the unusual, but still interesting effect captured was because the mode wheel on the camera had moved and not because the camera was broken.