This & That: The Mighty Hudson

Toward the end of 2009, New York State opened a new State Park in Poughkeepsie called the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park. Just about everyone we talked to recommended we visit it, so it was high on our priority list for the few days we had in the Hudson Valley after the wedding festivities.

This park consists of a pedestrian bridge which was developed at the site of an old railroad bridge. At 212 feet tall and 1.3 miles long, it is the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world. Did you get that? In the world!

It's a nice wide expanse, and of course you start out over land. I'm surprised that this shot doesn't show any other people on the bridge, because it is quite well used and obviously a popular spot with both locals and tourists.

We arrived rather late in the afternoon, so didn't take advantage of the glass elevator that brings you to ground level on the eastern bank of the river so you can walk to a riverside park, a children's museum, and several restaurants.

This is the eastern view looking north:

And then looking south along the same side of the river you can see another bridge. You can actually do a 4.5 mile walk by combining the pedestrian bridge with a return walk over the vehicular bridge and make a big loop. That would be fun to do, but we didn't have time and I only had flip flops on my feet.

We waked to the center of the bridge so that we could get nice views of the entire river. It's a very pretty area.

By now you realize that the photo above looks north and the photo below looks south. Amtrak travels up and down the eastern bank of the river and the freight trains travel along the western bank. While we were on the bridge we saw both types of trains heading south.

There is also a restaurant on the western side of the bridge, though you must have to walk off the end of the bridge and over ground to reach it, because I don't think there is an elevator on that side of the river.