Walking Across the Mississippi River

Taking a Walk

Have you ever wanted to walk across the Mississippi River? Not like walking on water. I mean walking on a bridge, silly. Honestly, I had not thought too much about it. But then they opened the Big River Crossing in Memphis, and I suddenly became interested in walking across the river.

Big River Crossing is a new pedestrian bridge that runs along the side of the old Harahan Bridge. That bridge is for rail traffic across the river. When the bridge was originally built, it also had cantilevered sections on the sides for vehicle traffic. However, those vehicle sections have not been used since 1949.

A few years ago, it was decided to put a pedestrian and bike path in place of one of the vehicle sections, and that is now known as the Big River Crossing.

Which State Are We In?

We enjoyed a walk across the Mississippi River on the Big River Crossing recently while we were doing some other things around downtown Memphis. If you did not know, the Mississippi River serves as the state line between Tennessee and Arkansas. So when you walk across the river, you cross the state line.

As you can see from the above photo, at one point Jaylin was in Tennessee while Laura was in Arkansas. And I was somewhere in between in a state of limbo, since I was standing on the line while I took this photo. Pretty cool.

Also, there was a Mempops truck parked near where we had parked our car, so Laura and Jaylin each got a snack to enjoy on the walk. And you can see that they were still enjoying their pops when we reached the state line.

Big River Backdrop

Of course, you also have to take a photo with the Mississippi River and the Memphis skyline in the background. So that is what we did. We would have taken one looking this direction at the state line, but someone was hogging that side of the bridge at the line. So instead we took one at the next notch in the bridge that allows you to get closer to the edge.

By the way, this photo was taken at about the same place as the photo in the Memphis and the Mississippi River post, in case you are wondering.

The bridge over the river is just over a mile long, if you walk the whole way and then back to where you started, you have walked two miles. If you don’t walk all the way back, you are stuck in Arkansas.

Actually, when we reached the Arkansas end, the gates were closed and locked. That was because the trails at the Arkansas end were under lots of water thanks to all of the rain that we have gotten this year. Either that or Arkansas wanted to keep us undesirable Tennesseeans out of their state. I’m going with the first reason, however.

Even though you do not see many people in our photos here, there were quite a few out walking or riding their bicycles that day. Some even brought their dogs for a walk, too. It was pretty cool to say that we had walked across the Mississippi River!

Bible Verse

I will show you what someone is like who comes to Me, hears My words, and acts on them: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. When the flood came, the river crashed against that house and couldn’t shake it, because it was well built. - Luke 6:47-48

About the Photos

For our walk, I did not carry my entire camera bag. Instead, I just had my camera and the fisheye lens that was already attached to it. For the previously posted Mississippi River photo, I had wished that I had brought my zoom lens. But for these photos, the fisheye lens was just fine. And actually, in the end, I was perfectly fine with the fisheye lens for that other photo, too.

Unlike that Mississippi River photo, these photos involved just some quick, simple processing. Nothing too fancy, although I do like how the seemingly ominous clouds stand out here. We did get a few rain sprinkles as we walked, but nothing strong enough to make us turn around and run to the car.

Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens
Date: March 10, 2018
Location: Memphis, Tennessee