As seen from the Hawthorne Bridge

When you live in Portland, you know you're going to go over one of the bridges, to get from east to west. You know that the Willamette River is busy. And you know that you will now and then have to wait for bridges to open and close.

We've lived here almost four years and I've only been stopped for the Hawthorne Bridge to be raised a couple of times, so I was very happy to get the chance to take these few photos on the way home from work on May 20, 2010--I was on the bus. The other times I was driving the car one time, one time it was dark, so no photos those two times.


I took this photo of the Morrison Bridge through the window of the bus. We had stopped on the Hawthorne Bridge--it was being raised to let a tugboat go south on the Willamette River. I'm guessing that the tug had just pushed whatever that is in the bottom middle of the photo through the open Morrison Bridge. The black bridge in the background is the Steel Bridge.


I'm looking out the windshield of the bus now. You can see the moveable part of the Hawthorne Bridge there in the middle of the photo--it's on its way back to the closed position. The pedestrians and bicyclists have stopped, the ones going west anyway.


There's the tugboat, as seen through the railing on the Hawthorne Bridge.


More people gather to wait. The tugboat has passed through the raised bridge, and the Hawthorne is returning to its closed position.