4th Of July

We headed down to Riverfront Park in North Little Rock to find a place to watch the annual Pops On The River fireworks show that is held on Independence Day. After driving through traffic and finding a place to park, I realized that I forgot to bring my tripod. Whoops!

We sat up our chairs along the River Trail, and I used a concrete bollard as a sort of makeshift tripod. It was placed there rather precariously, so I spent most of the time before the show started making sure it didn't tumble off the bollard and also making sure my six year old didn't run off into the river. It managed to work ok, since I was able to capture some non-blurry pictures of fireworks that night....

Riverfront Park

The other day I had some free time, so I took a quick trip with the infrared camera to Riverfront Park in downtown Little Rock. There are a few neat spots as the park stretches across the banks of the Arkansas River. There is the Junction Bridge, which was an old railroad crossing that has been converted into a pedestrian bridge.



Nearby is a tunnel made of vines (I posted a picture of it in the last post). It was a popular spot, since it was a nice shady spot to sit on a warm June day. I got this picture from the inside:



Further down the park is the Vogel Schwartz Sculpture Garden, which now contains over 100 sculptures from artists across the country. One of the sculptures was this blue pony, in a piece called "Dancing Pony" by Kevin Box. According to the city of Little Rock's website: "Origami, paper planes, and crumpled ideas inspire the artist’s constant exploration with a love of paper. The sculpture piece is a result of collaborating with the origami master Te Tui Fu."



It proved to be a cool place to walk through, since the mix of sculptures with the decorative grasses and plants in the gardens looked really neat with the infrared camera. Here you can see a sculpture called "Mirage" by Ted Schaal on the right, and one called "Wiseguy" by Tim Cherry on the left. In the back is a sculpture called "Bunny Bump" by Laurel Peterson Gregory.



Nearby was this sculpture called "Boris," which was modeled after a French Bulldog owned by Dr. Dean Kumpuris who is an At-Large City Director and who was the person who came up with the idea of having a sculpture garden here in Riverfront Park. One could argue that it's not shocking that a sculpture of the dog owned by the person who runs the park was selected to be there. But then again, I would totally put a sculpture of my dogs in the park if I had the chance.



This is one more view of the sculpture "Bunny Bump," by Laurel Peterson Gregory. The city's website says: "The artist depicts playfulness and lightness of heart with bunnies having a blast doing the bump. Lines generate of sense of motion, and the use of no facial features allow the viewer to imagine expressions."



Nearby was this sculpture, called "Renewal Ritual" by Denny Haskew. It features a row of people sitting cross-legged, which the city website describes as "Wanting to show the ritual used by a couple to renew their commitment to one another, then using many colors or people and different conversations between different genders it shows society ability to sit down and converse with one another." Which reminds me of a story, of back when sitting cross-legged like this was called sitting "Indian-style" (kids now call it "criss-cross applesauce"). But when I was a little kid, I thought that it was called sitting "Indian-style" because that's how we were taught to sit at the elementary school I attended at the time - Indian Hills Elementary in North Little Rock.



And a wide shot of the sculpture garden, with the Little Rock Marriott hotel in the background.





On the left is a sculpture titled "Brazil" by artist Carol Gold. The city website describes this piece as "After her visit to Brazil, the artist expressed a reaction to the disparity between the wealthy and the very poor. ‘Brazil’ is one of a series of mostly male, silent and solitary figures."



And this view looking towards the river, with the Broadway Bridge in the distance.



After that I walked back the car and started driving home. But along the way I stopped for one last picture, from the backside of the State Capitol:

Down By The River

Amazingly, I managed to not slip and fall into the river the other night while trying to navigate the pointy rocks that line the river below the sidewalk in Riverfront Park. But at least it did provide this view of the Little Rock skyline, framed by the branches of an old tree that leans out over the water.

A Foggy Night

After taking a few pictures at the Baring Cross Bridge, I hopped back in the car and drove over to Riverfront Park to get more pictures before the fog dissipated. This was on a Friday night, and it was surprising to see people out and about, walking to the bars along Clinton Avenue. Even with vaccines, it's still strange to see people in groups (most everyone was masked when walking around, at least).

I walked over to The Belvedere, which provided this view of the fog and the Main Street Bridge.



The Belvedere was built in 1986 in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Arkansas' statehood. I'm assuming that the building was named after the 80s TV show Mr. Belvedere.



The current Main Street Bridge was built in 1973, which was then significantly altered in 1998 due to construction on the expanded Statehouse Convention Center. But the first Main Street crossing was built in 1897 and was then known as "The Free Bridge." That bridge was demolished in 1924 to make way for a newer bridge, which would then be demolished for the current bridge in the 1970s.



From there I walked over to the Junction Bridge, which is an old rail bridge that has been coverted into a busy pedestrian bridge. The first Junction Bridge was built in 1884, and was actually built right on top of the old "little rock" bluff that gave the city of Little Rock its name. Unfortunately, the bridge construction resulted in parts of the bluff being dynamited away and then unceremoniously dumped in to the river (historic preservation wasn't really a thing back in the 1800s). The bridge was rebuilt in the 1970s in order to allow for changes in river traffic after the completion of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. Rail traffic on the bridge ceased altogether in the 1990s, and after years of sitting idle the bridge was finally converted into a pedestrian bridge in 2008.