Insert Bridge Cliche Here

Since my husband left the country, I have made several trips to my parents’ house in Delaware. This is a five hour drive with three restless but generally cooperative kids in the back seat, and it includes a trip across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Until last summer, I had never been across that bridge and didn’t know anything about it. Now, my husband jokes, I am likely to pay enough in tolls on the bridge this year to sponsor a repaving project next year. The toll in each direction is $12, and the bridge does not offer any frequent traveler discount book or EZPass reduction. If you are going back and forth in 24 hours, you can cross for $5, but I can’t imagine any circumstances that will cause me to take two 5 hour trips in 24 hours. So every time I go off to visit someone coastal, I will be dropping $24 right off the top. The strangest thing about this exorbitant toll is that I am happy to pay it, because the trip across that bridge is worth every penny.

When I am traveling across the Bridge Tunnel, and the water is as blue as the sky, and the waves are sparkling in the sun as they slowly roll onto the sandy dunes, the urge to pull over just to spend some time staring is almost irresistible (but less appealing when I’m traveling with my three favorite companions). In fact, the bridge has several scenic lookouts for people who are overcome by the urge to stop. And the scenery is impressive in every sort of weather. The kids always check the water when we head out across the Bridge Tunnel, because it never looks the same way twice. Sometimes it is completely flat, sometimes it has small waves, sometimes there are breakers right in the middle of the bay. On Friday, the weather was hazy, and the sky and water were almost the same color of grey when I looked to the east. When I looked out to the west however, the other span of the bridge was blocking the horizon, making it impossible to tell where the water stopped and the sky began, making me feel like I was traveling along the edge of the earth. On Sunday, when the weather was worse, every aspect of the scenery was its own shade of grey - the road, the sky, the street lamps, the ships - and in the long stretches where there are no signs or other cars, I felt like I was traveling in a black and white photograph. The sunsets are amazing, and I imagine the sunrises are too, although I am sure I will never witness one myself.

Although the Bridge Tunnel extends over a 20 mile stretch of water, it is a lot less scary than other roads that do not even cross over water. For one thing it is low and flat, unlike the other Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Annapolis which provides drivers to acrophobics who are afraid to cross the bridge. In fact the Bridge Tunnel is so low and flat, that it gives you the reassuring feeling that the impact wouldn’t kill you if you were for some reason forced off the bridge and into the water. Another huge advantage to the Bridge Tunnel is that the odds of being forced off the road and into the water are rather low, since the traffic is sparse and the bridge is wide – the southbound span has a breakdown lane for its entire length. The Bridge Tunnel is also extremely well lit, with street lights every 20 yards or so for its entire length. The disconcerting part of its architecture is the tunnels, where the traffic from both spans comes together to pass through a tunnel that is one lane in each direction. The tunnels are short and bright, but rather tight, particularly when an 18-wheeler is barreling toward you just inches from the center line. Another problem with the tunnels is that as you come around a curve on the bridge, you can sometimes see the missing bridge sections where the road travels through the tunnels. It looks as if the bridge you are driving on is about to come to an abrupt end, which always gives me a quick uneasy feeling, even though I know (for the most part) that I’m not about to drive off the end of the bridge.

So what is there to look at besides the architecture? How about birds? On calm days, you can often see a sea gull perched on top of every street light. On windy days, you can often see the remains of unlucky sea gulls splattered beneath every street light. While I find both live and dead sea gulls rather disgusting on the beach, I can appreciate them from the confines of my car. According to the Bridge Tunnel website, the wetlands leading up to the bridge on the north side have all kinds of birds in them, like pelicans, ducks, herons, and peregrine falcons (which I may have seen the other day, I saw some big hulking bird that looked like a hawk – my dad suggested that it may have been an osprey – in this instance, I wish I knew more about birds). Often you can see groups of birds circling and diving in the same part of the water, probably to the dismay of the fishies underneath.

But the fishies have other things to worry about. In every sort of weather you can always see a number of guys fishing from small motor boats near the bridge. The Navy and Coast Guard train in the bay, so on most trips across the bridge you can see boats and ships of all sizes, some of them moving at shocking speeds, up and down the bay. The tunnels were obviously built to accommodate them as well as the wide variety of cargo ships and barges that travel through the bay. Things are usually so hopping on the water, that I can point out enough boats that every kid manages to spot one, alleviating the sort of extended crying jag that can erupt when two of them see a cow and one misses it. With the Navy and the Coast Guard close at hand (and the small amount of traffic) I don’t eye the boats up for potential terrorists the way I do on some other bridges. However, on Friday, a day when the water was perfectly still, we saw a guy on a small motorboat that was rocking so violently I wondered if his companions were having a Sopranos’ style tussle below deck.

In the middle of the bridge is a rest stop with a fishing pier, restaurant, and gift shop, but I have never stopped there, because while I think the bridge is perfectly safe, I don’t really feel the need to linger out there, particularly since I know I couldn’t singlehandedly save the kids if the fishing pier fell into the water. Other people stop though, because sometimes with your $12 toll you get a coupon for a free soda at the restaurant. The rest stop is probably very safe too, since the Bridge Tunnel has its own police force to scare everyone into driving the speed limit. According to their web page, the Bridge Tunnel employs 165 people, including, I’m sure, a few full time bird carcass removers. I’d be very interested to see if they scoop the birds into a bag, or over the side into the water, which I guess would be one way to attract bigger sporting fish.

I don’t just enjoy the Bridge Tunnel, I enjoy the fact that when I travel the Bridge Tunnel route, I do not have to drive on I-95, the capital beltway, Route 50, and Route 404 (the main roads that make up the alternate route for traveling from our part of the world to the Delaware shore). Although the roads we travel to and from the Bridge Tunnel are small and run through many small towns where the speed limit drops to 35 mph, they are stress-free for the most part. I have yet to see any road rage by the occupants of the few other cars and trucks traveling along with us. Anyone who has lost huge chunks of their life in traffic around Washington, DC, (or huge parts of their weekend to the lines at the tolls for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Annapolis) would likely agree with me that if the Bridge Tunnel toll was changed one finger rather than $12, there would be a huge increase in the hook-wearing population.



I was surprised to read that the first span of the Bridge Tunnel was built in 1965 (when it was voted One of Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern World), and the second was not finished until 1999. I don’t think I would have traveled across it when it was only one span, because it would have been a little claustrophobic. But now it has two spans and so I highly recommend the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to everyone. However, given the amount of traffic I’ve seen on it, few people have business that takes them out that way. So for everyone who has no business at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, I highly recommend the Bridge Tunnel web page, which is quite informative and has lots of pretty pictures.