Saturday, March 27, 2010

St. Adolphe... almost.

We've been having a little warmer than usual spring here in Manitoba, so the roads are clearing up quicker than normal. Nearly all the snow is gone. Yesterday was a nice, sunny +8 degrees Celsius out, so I took advantage of that and went for a ride south to go see how the roads were out to St. Adolphe. This is a very popular route, and one that I often head out on, it's a nice 30k ride if you leave from the perimeter highway, but can be stretched to 50k if I leave from home and add a little loop just past the town of St. Adolphe.

One reason why I wanted to head out that way was it follows the Red River, which is very high this time of year (not as high as last year when the roads were flooded out). As I came up to the turn to go over the river, I saw a barricade. So naturally I went through it and rode the very loose, and very rough gravel road up to the bridge.

I had to get off and walk a couple sections, so I took a couple more photo ops.

You can start to see the water level and ice on the river.


The geese are coming in already, and there was a herd of deer out in the field too.


And this is why this post it titled 'St. Adolphe... almost"
Last year the bridge was found to be unsafe to drive on as one of the support pillars had shifted.
I remember riding over it a couple days before it was discovered and thought the gaps in the expansion joints looked different than usual. I did forget about it by the time I got back home though. Hopefully the bridge is fixed soon as the residents have to drive a long ways out of their way to get over the river now.

2 comments:

carolyne b said...

Ryan they say the bridge should be up and running by the winter of 2010. The gov is just waiting for water levels to go down before they can finish it off. Hope Abby is feeling better soon missed her at sacrement meeting on Sunday. and you to of course.

R Smith said...

Yeah, heard that on the radion the other day. That's a long time for a bridge to be out. Guess I'll just have to ride to St. Agathe to get across the river.