Docking In Los Angeles...We Are Heading Home!!!

This is the last leg of our Panama Canal adventure...arriving in Los Angeles early this morning and captured this dawn photo of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It has been a wonderful voyage on the Cunard's "Queen Elizabeth", but it's good to be home too. I'll be back blipping over the next day or two, so look for the previous 2+ weeks of photos.

Now, for some interesting info about this beautiful bridge----

The Vincent Thomas Bridge is a 1,500-foot (460 m) long suspension bridge, crossing the Los Angeles Harbor in the U.S. state of California, linking San Pedro, Los Angeles, with Terminal Island. The bridge is part of State Route 47. The bridge opened in 1963 and is named for California Assemblyman Vincent Thomas of San Pedro, who championed its construction. It is the fourth longest suspension bridge in California and the 76th longest span in the world. The clear height of the navigation channel is approximately 185 feet (56 m).

The terminal for ferries and helicopters to Santa Catalina Island is located underneath the western part of the bridge.

The bridge was built to replace the ferries that connected San Pedro and Terminal Island, in anticipation of increased traffic volume accompanying growth of the port. Throughout the bridge's construction and in the early years after its opening, it was derided as a "bridge to nowhere". In the 1970s, however, its importance drastically increased as the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach displaced those of the San Francisco Bay Area as the principal port on the U.S. West Coast.

Today, the Vincent Thomas Bridge carries a considerable volume of truck traffic from the southernmost slips of the Port of Los Angeles, in San Pedro, onto the Terminal Island Freeway and eventually to the southern end of the Long Beach Freeway; from there, freight goes from the port complex to the rail yards of East Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

In January 2005, after 17 years of planning and fundraising, the bridge was illuminated with blue LEDs, powered by solar panels. There are 160 lights on the bridge and it is the first combined use of solar power and LEDs in a bridge lighting installation