Down to the river

 

I will now finish my photo journal of a trip from my polling place at St. Thomas University, down to the river. 

Because my area of the Mississippi is the only tiny section along it's prodigious 2,340 miles that actually has river bluffs, the river bottoms remain strangely rough and wild here, but also hard to get down to. In this immediate area there is a decent way down to the shore at the WWI memorial, and another one I've only belatedly discovered along a stream running beautifully out of the University campus. This last is the path along which these pictures were taken.

I don't feel my comments add a lot to so many pictures, and I've restlessly altered them more than my lost batch, so I'd best let them speak for themselves mostly. If I can't resist a brief comment though I will indulge myself.

We start still on the campus proper among the old brick buildings...

And here enter the stream path, which starts out very developed...

...And grows increasingly pretty (note the Catholic University's metalwork motif)...

...Then more wild...

Until we go under the River Road bridge where things get a little decrepit. Here we enter the valley of the Bigfoot, legendary creature of the Mississippi, who is shy and rarely spotted by even the most intrepid of fox and skunk photographers!

And down to the bluffs the stream passes through to our mighty river!

To the side are these two versions of this little passthrough cave in the bluff, one more... fanciful than the other...

Finally all the way down to the shore, which is wild and, at low water, festooned with all kinds of garbage, but is strangely peaceful nevertheless.