Some many, many years ago, I spent a few days in Stillwater, MN.  Ph.Duck's older brother and his family lived there, and I was a guest in their home while Ph.Duck and Momzerduck did... something I don't remember now, perhaps attend a wedding.  Something like that.  Anyway, being a college kid, I didn't want to just hang out at their (really nice!) house, I wanted to find something fun to do.  Hard to do without a car in Stillwater, but not impossible. 

After descending the Thousand Stairs Of Doom, I found myself in the Historic Downtown District.  To my left was quaint shops, some attractive looking bar & grills, that sort of thing.  To my right was the riverside area.  I headed to one of the bars... it was a sunny early afternoon and warm, so the dark and air conditioning was welcome.  The place, and I will never forget this as long as I live, was called "Cat Ballou's" and had what looked like a life-sized wood-carved statue of Jane Fonda from the movie of the same name near the door.  I was pretty much the only person in the place that early in the day... I remember the cheeseburger and fries being tasty, and the beer quite pleasant indeed. 

After a couple of hours working on my version of The Great American Novel, I headed back out to the riverside area.  Yup, it's a river.  Oh look, boats.  Pretty girl in a sundress.  More boats.  Still a river.  What the hell is that?

At the time, I had no idea there was such a thing as a lift bridge.  Drawbridge, sure.  Truss bridge, uh-huh.  Suspension, cable-stay, arch and cantilever bridges, you bet.  But a lift bridge?!?!  What sort of magic is this?  I was fascinated!  As it turns out, it was stuck in the up position at the time, due to all the equipment being original to when it was built and it sometimes does that, but I didn't care at all.  How lovely it was to see such a thing.

I'm sure the traffic that had to detour some ridiculous distance to get across the St Croix river disagreed with my assessment, but that's beside the point.  It was the neatest thing I saw during that visit to Minnesota.  It's still there, though you have to make an appointment with the State to open it for your boat, but it's still there.

Then came the climb back up the Thousand Stairs of Doom.  The climb up was a lot worse than going down, and I changed my plans for the next day so to avoid them.  I haven't seen the bridge since.

I still think it's magic, and I can't honestly see a reason to build one over a drawbridge, but it's still awfully cool.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:13 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 472 words, total size 3 kb.