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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 1:06:30 GMT
Late this afternoon I took a bicycle ride up to the Mississippi River levee near my house. It's a real short bike ride but there is a bike path on top of the levee. It was very quiet up there today,not much foot or bike traffic. Not much traffic on the river or the rails either. I sat up there for awhile and enjoyed the quietude and the sunset. I saw one lone egret and that's about it. Bicycle and foot path atop the levee the river side of the levee (this is not the levee that flooded.This levee runs along the Mississippi from the French Quarter all the way upriver to Baton Rouge) Shallow water just on the other side,lone egret to the far right. standing atop a large dirt mound looking back to the other side,my neighborhood and in the far,far distance you can see a couple of downtown skyscrapers
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 1:17:18 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 29, 2009 1:23:28 GMT
This is so nice! You really captured the mood. I love how it starts in broad daylight, then you perfectly captured that bright golden light from atop the dirt mound, then bit by bit it becomes dark.
Great pics -- I particularly like #7.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 1:30:35 GMT
Thanks. It was so quiet up there today, almost eerily so. I'll tell you, I have to cringe when I see those high tension towers.T. climbed to the top of one of those while on a substance. (In the 1970's,like that makes it alright...) They now have some kind of barriers to prevent people from doing that.
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Post by lagatta on Nov 29, 2009 2:24:57 GMT
Amsterdam gone sultry Southern! Those are called polders in Dutch. I've done a very similar bicycle ride in Amsterdam (from the central city to a suburb where friends live), but of course the vegetation is different and there is not such a huge river. The North Sea is a big body of water, but the Amstel is nothing like the Mississippi. The big river around there is the Rhine, but that ends around Rotterdam, not Amsterdam.
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Post by imec on Nov 29, 2009 6:57:22 GMT
Absolutely gorgeous sunset! Love the barge in silhouette!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2009 17:43:48 GMT
Except for the levee in downtown New Orleans, I had actually never seen a levee on the Mississippi River, so these pictures are great.
I know those November skies very well.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2009 11:36:52 GMT
There are so very many misconceptions about the levee system here particularly after Katrina. People just hear the word levee and automatically think ,oh,flood zone. The length of this particular levee and the land alongside is known as "the isle of denial" or "the sliver by the river". The land is on higher ground then the rest of the city and on what is referred to as a natural levee. In the first 2 pictures if you look to the end of the bike /foot path you will see a whitish structure. That is the headquarters for the Army Corps of Engineers here in NOLA. When we saw that building being erected many of us felt much more at ease. Why would the U.S. government spend so much money to erect such a large facility if it was vulnerable? Of course,the whole city is vulnerable but we're much less so given the natural topographics of the city.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 30, 2009 17:19:21 GMT
Pedantry in motion here: the boulevard near Casimira's house is located on a chenier, or naturally occurring higher ridge, atop which oak trees grow.
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