A day at the beach

...err, "Reach." I didn't realize that sign didn't say "Beach" until I was getting this photo ready to post.

As I mentioned yesterday, I scheduled today off so I could take my mom for a follow-up to her cataract surgery. Her last appointment took a while, during which time I did a fairly good impression of some homeless bum dozing in the waiting room of an eye clinic, so this time I resolved to spend the time out and about getting photos in the general vicinity.
My first stop was a sad one. I had planned on visiting the Tudor Book Shop one last time today, but I got an e-mail over the weekend telling me that this past Tuesday would be their last day. So it turns out my last visit was the Saturday before last, when I stopped in while killing time before picking up my friend to go see RENT. I didn't even buy anything that day. Now they're gone.

After that I headed for the Susquehanna River, which forms the border between Kingston and Wilkes-Barre. I parked on Pierce Street on the Kingston side and walked across the bridge to get some pictures of the swollen river. Here are some trees that are usually well above the river's edge.

Here's a shot along the Pierce Street Bridge looking South towards the Luzerne County Courthouse.
Here's another view of the Courthouse and the other buildings along the riverfront. To the left of center you can just make out a statue - I think it's Christ the King (though it may be the nearly-identical Christ the Redeemer) atop the Administration Building at King's College.
Turning further to the West, here is the Market Street Bridge. (Compare this to the third image on the linked post, which was a shot of the Pierce Street Bridge from the Market Street Bridge!)
Finally, as I headed back to the car something else caught my eye and I grabbed one last image. To the East, dimly visible, are the local windmills - err, the wind-driven electrical generators, or "wind generators" for short. Here are three of them (I think out of a total of eleven) lurking behind a Martian Tripod cleverly disguised as a water tower.
Blown-up version:

The windmills are currently turned off - perhaps as a precaution because of yesterday's storms, or perhaps because of the presence of migrating birds in the area, birds whose presence was made obvious by the enormous quantity of droppings that now coated the car. Someday when the air is drier (and there are fewer large migratory birds in the area fueling up for the last leg of their journey North!) I will have to go back and try to recreate this shot.