Fall Has Hit New England

Wednesday Sept. 30, 2009: Tonight, I'm in Ellsworth, Maine.  Today consisted of 258 miles of what would have been the most beautiful colors had it not been for an all-day pouring rain.  Fall has definately hit the New England states, but unfortunately, so has the rain, by the bucketfuls.  At last count, I think I've seen approximately 3-4 hours of sunshine since Saturday morning.  Needless to say, my efforts at photography have been very limited.  I just can't seem to get the colors captured with the dark overcast skies and the almost constant rain.  During the few periods of sunlight, I did manage to capture a couple shots to share.  Maybe it'll be better on the return side.

I find myself very intrigued by the engineering of the support trusses that support these covered bridges.  Keeping in mind they were built at a time before steel "I" beams were common to bridge construction, the spans are commonly well over 100 feet.  The longest being the Blenheim Bridge in New York which is 228 feet long with an incredible 210' feet between abutment supports.  With support truss names like  the Burr, Inverted Bowstring, Multiple King, Paddleford Arch, Tied Arch, Town and Supplement, etc., it's going to be interesting to learn more about the construction techniques of the period and why one design was favored over another.  More on that later if I'm fortunate enough to visit them coming back.

Vermont along has something like 100+ covered bridges and I had intended to visit approximately 25-30 of them.  Unfortunately, the weather isn't cooperating, but I was able to visit about four before aborting the bridge tour for now.  Just as a reminder, you can click on each picture for a full screen view.