The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway: A blue water odyssey

^{The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, an engineering marvel that bridge afficionaldos must experience}

“Boooring and unscenic” the Louisiana native said. “And why would you want to cross the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway when we can get from New Orleans to Baton Rouge much more directly on I - 10?”
 
Whoa! I’m a bridge man. I still get a jolt thinking about my first sighting of the Brooklyn Bridge and my slow touristy walk across it from Brooklyn to the city a few winters ago.
 
The Ponchartrain Causeway is the longest highway bridge over water in the whole wide world. It’s 23.9 miles long. The gigantic lake is more like an inland sea, 630 square miles, forty miles wide, and wow, who wouldn’t want to drive those twenty three miles north and south over the heart of the lake.
 
“There’s nothing to see but water,” she said.
 
“Exactly! That’s the point! Sort of like magically driving over water,” I reason as I headed north from The French Quarter in New Orleans.

Twenty minutes later, the enormous lake appeared. Two parallel spans, 80 feet apart, with two lanes each, whitewashed in the noon sun, stretched straight out to the vanishing point.
 
Ten minutes later, my passenger was dozing. I was snapping photos and thrilling to the ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk rhythm as the tires traversed the pre stressed concrete panels on the road, held up by 9000 concrete pilings.
 
Metairie on the south shore was receding in the rear view mirror; Saint Tammany Parish on the north shore wouldn’t come into view for another fifteen minutes.
 
Clipping along at about 60, ten miles per hour less than the limit, so I could snap photos in the brilliant midday sun, I was mildly disappointed when the north shore, Covington and Mandeville, appeared on the horizon. After a lifetime of driving over terra firma, surrounded by forests, pastures, brick and mortar cities, and clapboard hamlets, driving over terra aqua was otherworldly.

When British mountaineer George Mallory was asked in 1923, “Why climb Mount Everest?” he responded, “Because it is there.” The Ponchartrain Causeway Bridge, the world’s longest bridge over water was there. Well...

 An estimated 30,000 cars cross the Causeway Bridge every workday. I’ll bet I had more fun than any of them.

Photo by Paul Tamburello, holding camera out window at 60 mph. Not recommended techique for amateurs.

Comments

[Gerard McMahon]

Ka chunk ka chunk... you caught the experience to a "T" thank you for sharing!
Thank you for all the facts you included!