Walkway over the Hudson

Posted by Shaun on November 15th, 2009 filed in Junk drawer
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I’ve been looking forward to going on the newly finished Walkway over the Hudson and last weekend I was finally able to do it.

If you’re not familiar with it the walkway it is a newly refurbished walkway built on top of a 130 year old train bridge. The bridge looks rusty, but is holding up quite well for being so old. The walkway is a series of very thick concrete slabs laid on top of the bridge. There is also a very sturdy and talk set of railings along the entire walkway. The bridge and walkway are designed to move a bit by design (from what I can see), but walking on it you get the feeling of a very sturdy structure.

I took Emelia for a trip around Poughkeepsie and finally found our way to the parking lot. We lucked out and found an empty space and took advantage of the dying light of the day to walk out on the bridge. She was not too willing to walk, but she made it out a bit, but I did end up carrying her a lot. We didn’t reach the water, but got a good look at the local wildlife. The following morning we made another trip to the bridge and this time we came prepared with a stroller. We made it all the way across and back without incident.

The walk from the parking lot to the start of the bridge is pretty nice.

This is an old signal light. It’s the only one that I saw.

As you can see from this photo the walkway is clearly straight and relatively flat. Most of the walkway is like this. The only variations are the occasional chain link fence to protect roadways from falling objects and a couple of areas where the walkways is widened.

We were prepared for cold winds, but the day ended up warm and windless. Better safe than sorry.

I like this view of the houses and the Mid-Hudson bridge in the distance.

A nice view or Route 9 and the Poughkeepsie Train Station.

This is me showing Emelia an Amtrak train that showed up to offload passengers.

Another shot of the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

This guy was clearly trying to be the first to do something unique on the bridge. I didn’t have the nerve to take a picture of him from the front, but from the back who cares.

The not so pretty riverfront property.

This side of the bridge isn’t too bad. This area has the train station, but also the children’s museum (which we’ve visited a couple times) and a riverfront part.