Chartiers Creek at Carnegie

 A few Saturdays ago, when the water levels were high--due to recent rains--I put my kayak in near Mayview and rode the current all the way into Bridgeville.  The water was moving fast.  There was no whitewater but a lot of rapids and choppy areas that sent the boat headfirst into tall waves, which lapped up into the hull.  The ride was only about a mile, and it took less than twenty minutes.  I got soaked, completely drenched.  But it felt like an amusement park ride.  It really gave me a taste for riding the rapids.   

In a search for MOVING WATER, I went to the borough of Carnegie to put into Chartiers Creek under one of the bridges.  (The upper stretches of the stream are shallow except after heavy rains, but apparently the canoeing and kayaking is good year-round from Carnegie to the creek's mouth at the Ohio River.)  There's a poorly maintained website about canoeing Chartiers Creek, and it tells canoeists to put in under Carnegie's Main Street Bridge, but it's wrong.  You have to put in under the nearby Mansfield Boulevard Bridge...which I discovered and did.  Tried to fight the current in a mad paddle upstream toward Heidelberg, but it was a short-lived exercise in futility.  However, my most recent plan is to park at the PNC Bank in Carnegie, carry the kayak 3/4 of a mile south on the railroad tracks toward Heidelberg, then ride back downstream to the car.  By railroad track, the distance from Heidelberg to downtown Carnegie is only that, 3/4 mile.  But there's a bend in the stream that will make the water-ride at least two miles.  (This is my problem: I've got a new love for rapidly moving water, but I don't have any friends to drop me off at Point A and pick me up  at Point B.)  

These are scenes from under the Mansfield Boulevard Bridge in Carnegie.  The current looks mild, but it's insistent!  The top photo looks upstream (south), and you can see the Main Street Bridge in the distance.  The banks near that bridge are far too steep to descend with a kayak.  The bottom picture looks downstream (north), with some shallow, rapidly moving water in the distance.  Carnegie actually proved to be an interesting old town that might merit a little exploration in the near future.  It's another one of those old satellite cities that isn't exactly a suburb but has been absorbed by metropolitan Pittsburgh.

16th Street Bridge, Pittsburgh

 Is it unacceptably dorky to have a favorite bridge in a provincial city like Pittsburgh?  My favorite by far is the 16th Street Bridge, which spans the Allegheny River from the Strip District to a nondescript area on the North Side.  I've never really known why Pittsburgh built its most glorious bridge between two such unglamorous neighborhoods.  These shots are taken from a kayak in the river.  I didn't think to photograph the whole bridge from a greater distance.  

And yet, it is a fine bridge with four grand stone pillars, each topped with a copper statue of four horses rising out of waves beneath a stylized globe.  Pittsburgh's second best bridge is the Smithfield.  It's not nearly as beautifully designed, but the Smithfield Bridge has the added dignity of bearing folks across the Monongahela River from downtown to one of the old former railway stations in the South Side area now known as "Station Square."  

There are three identical yellow suspension bridges known as "The Three Sisters."  These are parallel bridges that run across the Allegheny from downtown to the North Side: The Rachel Carson Bridge, the Roberto Clemente, and the Andy Warhol.  They're attractive--if simple--and deserve an honorable mention.

Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh