10 September 08: Fantastic voyage



I wasn't lying on Monday when I said I was taking a technology timeout, but believe me, I wasn't going to sit around on such a beautiful day pouting about it. I thought a six hour boat ride on the Delaware River was a better idea. As did Kellie Gates, whose story on the Delaware Riverkeeper for PlanPhilly was the impetus for my joyride. Her story and some of my photos are HERE.

I arrive a few minutes late for our 9 o'clock launch in part because I don't know how to exit US-13 in Tullytown. Lucky for me, Kellie and the Riverkeeper -- known in less organizational settings as Maya van Rossum -- are coming back from the dock to the gated entrance at D&S Marina. "I got bird poop on my hands -- I'm not going out on the river with bird poop on my hands," van Rossum says upon greeting me.

After washing her hands, we walk out to The Delaware Riverkeeper, the eponymous boat of the organization van Rossum heads, and whose citizen action coordinator is Fred Stine, who's waiting at the boat for us. As we untie and start the engine, I grab a cushioned seat facing the direction of the boat's travel . . . and am greeted with bird poop of my own, on my fresh washed jeans. Well how do you like that. Rather than hold things up any further to go all the way back to the marina bathhouse, I wipe it off and now I'm the one with bird poopy hands. Even as Waste Management's Tullytown landfill looms like some mountainscape above us, I figure the Delaware River's inlet is a cleaner option for the hands that would at long last be handling a Canon 5D for the duration of our cruise, so a splash-bath my hands do get.

And off we go downstream, with but one definite destination, the Philadelphia Marina next to Dave & Buster's, where we will refill and pick up another passenger, Northern Liberties activist Hilary Regan. How timely, I think, as we pass under the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Burlington-Bristol Bridges, as they're next in line for our Tidal Delaware Bridges series. Likewise for Tacony-Palmyra, Betsy Ross, Delair, Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman. The farthest south bridge we encounter is the Schuylkill's southernmost, the Girard Point Bridge carrying I-95 parallel to the Delaware.

Along the way, I am the giddy sightseer I expected to be, pointing my new camera at a to-do list that includes the bridges and the skyline (obviously), landmarks like the Tioga and Packer port terminals and Penn's Landing, and PlanPhilly topics like SugarHouse and pier redevelopment. There are a slew of unexpected surprises, too, like the abandoned and graffitied warehouse near Pennypack Creek and the Burlington Generating Station (seen at right), originally designed by Paul Cret. Its stacks rise with perfect, snakelike pipes above cubist powerhouses and drums Kraftwerk might use. All four of the power stations -- Burlington, Port Richmond, Delaware and Pier 92 -- in their various states of use (or, sadly, demolition in the case of Delaware) command the attention and imagination of the riverfarer, be it a Pink Floyd Animals or a Tate Modern -- or, as Regan once proposed for the PECO Delaware Station, a Calder Museum.

Coming around the corner where Neshaminy Creek empties into the Delaware, at Neshaminy State Park, the skyline comes into view with Burlington-Bristol Bridge still within sight. As I point this out, Gates says "wow" -- like a collection of uncut silver topaz crystals, she writes -- and van Rossum sighs. It's evident that the Riverkeeper is no fan of the city. I was actually surprised to learn she lives in the region, near Bristol, and not Delaware Water Gap, as I'd previously thought.

It's also evident, and understandable, that van Rossum is rooting for Mother Nature, when she lights up at abandoned piers which are years into the process of reclamation by nature -- piers like those at the Conrail Yards and at Wal-Mart, South Philly's Pier 70. Were it up to her, there would be no port, no parking lots, no prisons and no Penn's Landing. "They build this so-called celebration of the river," she says pointing to the Chart House Restaurant, "yet they close it in with windows and give you no way of coming down to touch the river."


The fabulous ruins of the McMyler coal dumper, at Port Richmond's Conrail Yards, future site of . . . _____?

Seeing it from this perspective, it is indeed fascinating how little there is in Philadelphia city-county in the way of getting your feet wet -- rolling up your pant legs and making a physical connection to the River that is the reason for our city. There are piers and there are promenades; there are marinas and there are ports; there is the Navy Yard. But all told, you can probably count on both bands the total places you can get to the river: Penn Treaty Park with its unforgiving boulders, Frankford Arsenal with its tiny, muddy fishing beach, a pebbly, low-tide-only beach near a large apartment building in Torresdale.

The Jersey side, including Petty's Island, is far more lush. Palmyra Cove, whose interpretive center and parking area are at the foot of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, has several miles of hiking trails, including along the sandy Delaware shore, which van Rossum says is about the closest the city section of the River comes to its natural state. "But," she points out, "there is probably large development just on the other side of the brush."

As we pass under the Walt Whitman Bridge, looking on toward the giant derricks and tiny shipping containers of the Port, and discussing whether or not Southport will happen, a longshoreman waves us over and calls to us from the dock that a jet skier is in distress downstream. Looking through my telephoto lens, I see the jet ski in question with no rider on it. Stine, a former Coast Guard serviceman who is captaining the ship, puts it in high gear as we head toward a possible rescue mission.

Luckily, the rider is off of the watercraft by his own doing. "I repair these things," says the man who looks like the wrestler Diamond Dallas Page, before suggesting this one may need a little more work. It's broken down, and with no power, he's tied it to himself in an attempt to swim it back to shore on the Jersey side. The Delaware Riverkeeper ties him to The Delaware Riverkeeper and we start toward Gloucester City with perhaps a little more ease than swimming with a jet ski strapped on your back.

Before we can even make a wake, the Philadelphia Police Marine Unit approaches us to make sure everything is OK. It is, but we defer to their more powerful boat to get him back to land, and as we're transferring the broke down jet ski, Gloucester City's Fire Department Marine Unit checks in to make sure all is well.

It is, so we bid our adieus and bend round the surprisingly green curve between the Port and the Navy Yard. Planes are coming in for landing overhead (all of which were the blue-and-white US Airways models but for one colorful Southwest bird); warships, including the aircraft carrier John F Kennedy sleep just beside us. Just beyond the handsome early 20th century buildings where Navy civilian engineers share lunch with the sartorial Urban pioneers, Lincoln Financial Field stands proudly as the scene of Sunday's 38-3 massacring of the St Louis Rams.

As we approach Block Island, formed from sedimentation deposits emptied by the Schuylkill, van Rossum explains that it, along with Petty's and Burlington Islands, and several others within the Delaware, were a few years ago explored by the National Park Service on a fact finding mission in consideration of NPS designation. Where that is is anyone's guess, but Block Island is already a popular resting spot for pleasure boaters on both the Schuylkill and Delaware, as anyone can see when crossing the Girard Point Bridge. Block Island is also our turnaround point, so Stine does a mid-river U-turn and we head back north.

The northbound trek moves at a brisker pace than south, in part because the views are reruns and in part because, by now, it's 1 o'clock and the sun is beating down. Regan pulls some pre-cut watermelon from an Almanac Market bag like some cool, refreshing rabbit out of a dry, sun-drenched hat; in return, the grateful captain takes her in for a closer inspection of the Sugar House site and Delaware Station, whose north wing is little more than scrap heaps now.



From here, we cross the river to take the other side of Petty's Island north. The back channel is like a whole other river, a mini-Delaware: home of Camden's Pyne Poynt Park, a hidden marina, Fish House Cove and the 36th Street Bridge, the only road access onto Petty's Island and its Citgo oil facilities. On the Island's shore, though, are no signs of industry, just mud flats with birds.

Faster we go, under a 30th Street Station bound New Jersey Transit Atlantic City train, past one man with two coolers on the shore in Northeast Philly, past Glen Foerd mansion at the mouth of the Poquessing Creek, past what looks like a sailboat show in Bristol.

And one shade of red short of dangerous sunburn, we're back at Tullytown, watching a convoy of trucks moving dirt up on the landfill. It's one of about a million different scenes piling on the sensory overload from six hours on the water. The colors, the forms, the ideas, the stuff. It's a lot, and a lot of variety. Even just the boats -- gray warships, red tankers, black barges, brown tugboats, white yachts, white sailboats, white motorboats, a green kayak -- run the gamut.

It's the diversity of, well, everything, that makes the Delaware River's 23 Philadelphia miles so amazing. It makes it that much more amazing to consider that diversity of everything happens for 360 miles from the northwest Catskill Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean.



* * *

Many of my photos from the day are currently posted with Kellie Gates' story at PlanPhilly HERE, but I plan on having the complete photo essay online as soon as the Apple Store in Cherry Hill decides it can get my work station back to me.

–B Love


SUMMER OF THE DELAWARE ARCHIVES:

• 9 September 08: Trentonian Trifecta
• 5 September 08: Calhoun Street Bridge, my bridge
• 4 September 08: It's a Celebration, Bridges
• 3 September 08: "Scenic Overlook"
• 2 September 08: How I spent my Summer of the Delaware
• 25 August 08: Walk this way
• 18 August 08: Toke remnants
• 11 August 08: Pi reconsidered
• 4 August 08: A photographic interlude
• 29 July 08: Reconsidering Pi
• 25 July 08: Happy trail
• 18 July 08: Seeking the source
• 14 July 08: All this is mine
• 27 June 08: Welcome to the Summer of the Delaware

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