Where is the “Biggest Dam Bridge?”

Turned out to be a great day today weather wise, some sun in the morning, overcast a bit in the afternoon, but in the mid 70’s… just perfect.  Judy got her shorts out!

This morning, I was on a mission... after a nice skype call from Gwenny in Woodstock, well, OK, her Mother was with her on the call… I headed out to find a welder, as our mototote was in need!  

Thanks to the people running our RV Park, I found “John’s” Welding Shop, located in North Little Rock.  This is a picture below, of his backyard shop… he lives here, and does a big bang up business.  I got here at about 8:45 this morning, and they took a quick look at my problem and said “No Problem”  we can fix it!  I said “all right”!  They told me to come back in an hour…

The ramp you see below is the main part of the mototote, and I thought it was OK until we found a small crack on the bottom of it.  John’s Welding too care of that!

 

This is the ramp above, turned upside down… and welded already.  I bought primer paint and re-painted the whole piece to prevent rusting…

This was the piece that provided all the problems… it had cracked through around the square section in the centre, and you can see where they welded it back together… in my wisdom, I did not take pictures before the repairs…  John’s Shop did a great job… charging $70.00 for the repair, which was 1 hour of work.

 

This is the broken piece, which is now all painted up and ready to be re-assembled.

 

After we got the mototote all fixed up and ready to roll, we enjoyed lunch and then decided to take a little tour of Little Rock.  We wanted to go to AAA and pick up some maps… yes, you can go to an AAA Office in the States, and received all the benefits of being a CAA Member!  Same thing!  Judy was carrying on about wanting to see “The Big Dam Bridge” or something like that, and actually had an address for it that went into our TomTom GPS.  Away we went!

This is the start of the bridge…

The Bridge was built specifically as a pedestrian bridge, connecting the trail system of Little Rock, and North Little Rock, Arkansas.  It was sure to cost next to a small fortune, but they went ahead and built it anyways!   The signs says they wanted to ensure the two City’s were “linked”.  Below are some neat facts of the bridge…

Judy and I decided to hike the bridge… why not!  This is the start, and we are on the Little Rock side.

The bridge as you can see below, is actually built over a dam… The Murray Dam.  The dam actually supports the bridge for a good portion of the crossing.

Below you can see where the bridge sits on the dam footings…

A lot of people were running, walking, or riding a bike across the bridge… the portion you see with the roof over it is crossing a ‘lift lock’.

This is the Murray Lift Lock… part of the dam complex, and capable of lifting quite a large boat!

Judy was wearing her shorts today, it was quite nice…

 

This is the view looking west, from the bridge, along the Arkansas River which separates Little Rock, from North Little Rock.

Some nice rolling hills surround the area, with nice fall colours… I asked some people if they got snow here, and the answer was, “yes, a bit, sometimes…but not all the time”  it changes from year to year.

The sign on the centre span below, was advertising a “Full Moon Walk” coming soon… I wonder if you walk in the nude displaying the Full Moon!

They can controls water run off with the dam below…

 

My favourite pic of the day below, shows a bunch of people fishing on a centre island in the river…

We made it across, and this view below was looking back…

 

On the North Little Rock side below, they built an actual power generation facility… why not!  There was about a 20 foot drop in the water from one side of the dam to the other.

So, tomorrow we hit the road, and head west towards New Mexico.   We will drop down to Highway 20 out of Little Rock and enter New Mexico from the south side. 

And a big welcome to “Sassy and Bennie” our latest blog followers along for the ride out west!  Welcome!

Till tomorrow…