Bridge of Lions (May 21)

Taking us back to Florida for a hot minute (since it's been so cold and rainy here in Utah), here is the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine that we crossed many, many times—once on foot and several by car. We felt rather lucky to be on it when it opened, but we soon learned that it opens quite frequently (just about every hour and every half hour). It was still exciting, but not as exciting as the first time we saw it open.

Here's Andrew helping Phoebe touch the lion:

And here's the photographic evidence that Andrew and I once accidentally wore matching outfits:

He avoided standing beside me most of the day; he was so embarrassed. In my defense, I got dressed first! Of course, I did put on black leggings at first...and then changed into grey shorts at the last minute. But I hadn't even noticed that Andrew had grey shorts on. Either way it was pretty funny! And Phoebe and Alexander both wore their Bluey shirts that day as well, so we had two pairs of matching people in our family.

Here's Grandpa and Zoë walking on the bridge:

Here's Phoebe waving at some boats waiting for the bridge to open so they can cross underneath:

Here's Alexander watching the boats line up:

They were a long way down!

Here's Daddy, Miriam, and Alexander watching the bridge begin to swing open:

And here's Benjamin with the bridge fully open behind him:

And Alexander:

Alexander loves bridges and was thrilled to pieces to watch the bridge in action. Little did we know we'd get stuck on the bridge on our drive back to the beach house!

All of those bridges we drove across in Florida were just a small taste compared to the bridges we'd drive across in Louisiana! One bridge—The Twin Span—heading into New Orleans is 5.5 miles long! It was ruined during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with all the sections of the bridge knocked off kilter by the storm surge. There are two bridges side by side, with two lanes heading in each direction. They salvaged sections from one side, focusing on repairing just one of the two bridges. Then they built an entirely new set of bridges and when those were completed in 2011 they demolished the old bridges and used the pieces to form a reef of sorts. 

But even that bridge was small compared to the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, which is 18 miles long! Even that one isn't the longest bridge in the United States. Lake Pontchartrain's Causeway is 24 miles long (we saw it but didn't drive on it because we took the Twin Span across).

There were a lot of bridges for Alexander to appreciate on both the Florida trip and our drive through Louisiana!