Pictures of the River Trail

I took photos when I went for my run at the river one day this week. I tried to put them on in the order that I usually walk, but I can never seem to get things right for putting them in order on here.
This photo is where the river meets another river and the trail goes underneath the overpasses. Not the best part of the trail.





These birds and others are part of what makes my time on the trail more enjoyable and sometimes endurable. If I focus only on them and their antics, I can forget that I am in the middle of the city. :)

Right now, the river is really low, so there are all these places where there are exposed rocks and "sandbars" around for the birds to hang out. This photo has a couple of little ducks and another little crane.

Here's another photo of a bunch of different duck and cranes. The river had just been lowered, so they are now able to eat off the bottom of parts where the water had just previously been 10 feet deep or so.

This is the same shot, but with the background in it. What you see behind is part of Expo park, kind of like a science center, and new apartment buildings. Behind me, where you can't see, is more apartment buildings than you can count!

This is one area where there was an inflatable "dam" that was about 5 or 6 feet tall. They let the air out and now there is very little water compared to what there was before. Usually there are bunches of birds here too, but they moved downriver to the place where I took the last photo above.

Another one of my 'beloved' cranes. They are really funny and shy. They fight with each other often.

This is another shot like the first one at the top. It's where the rivers meet. There's so little water flowing right now, you can't really tell there are two rivers here-or even one for that matter. I am guessing that they are controlling the water that is leaving the dam and just holding it back for now. I don't know all the whys or hows, just guessing.

This is a photo taken after getting out from under the overpasses. To the right you can see part of the neverending rows of apartment buildings. This little river has more dry ground than water right now, and it's pretty dirty, but it still has a nice walking trail that goes for a long way.

This is another shot from a different perspective of the Expo park area and the new apartments over there. We live on the side where the photo is taken from. About a mile or so from the river.

More birds in a now-dry section of river. The day they really dropped the water level, I went out and as I was jogging along the trail and passing newly exposed areas on the edges of the river, I would look down and see fish of all sizes that had gotten stranded. They were flopping around and had no chance of getting to water. It was awful to watch. At one point, I tried to step down the concrete walls of the riverbank and onto the riverbed to try to throw a few back to some water that was nearby. But when I put my foot down on the river bed it started to sink. I decided that wasn't the best idea. Good thing I didn't have my new running shoes yet! The smell of this river is really pretty bad though. Even before the fish started dying from being stranded. I had a sick stomach for the rest of my run because it was just really awful to see all those fish helplessly flopping around and 'suffocating' to death. The birds hadn't discovered this yet, so they couldn't even put the fish out of their misery by eating them. Uggghhhh! I am looking forward to heaven so that there will be no more suffering and no more death! Not even of the little fish!

This photo is taken looking down river from the area where I usually take off for my run. There's a busy road across a "grassy" area and up the hill to the right of here. That road runs all along the river on the right side. There is another busy road on the other side of the river as well. It drops down enough that you can't really here alot of road noise. If you just look down, you can almost forget where you are. Of course, all of the garbage and dead fish and birds that you see along the river don't make it the best scenery either, but I take what I can get.

This is one of the inflatable dams half-way deflated. I was glad that I got to see this process in action because when I went by the next day, it was finished deflating and if I hadn't seen this stage I would have thought it was just completely gone. But it's not. It's flattened out in the bottom of the river bed. You can barely see it unless you know it's there. In this picture you can also see the wall and the way the river area is dropped down from the road. The roadway is at the top of that bank on the other side.

Well, I hope this gives a good idea of what this area is like that I have been telling some of you about. I am thankful that we haven't really had typical winter weather because I have been going down there most days with jogging pants and a very lightweight long-sleeved fleece top. It's been very comfortable. On other days, it's nearly unbearable because the wind is so biting cold. But the good days have definitely outweighed the bad, which is unusual for the month of December. Who needs a white Christmas, anyway? I keep telling myself that. :)........