Anyone who has seen the Sunshine Skyway bridge after dark knows what a stunning sight it is – glowing golden cables against the dark night sky. It’s a spectacular enough looking bridge in broad daylight, but at night, it is truly breathtaking.
I wanted to take a photograph so that I could show it off to those who haven’t had the chance to see it. My first attempt was to shoot it was with a long telephoto lens from the East Beach at Fort De Soto Park. Although the park closes at dark, my wife and I surreptitiously stuck around and I did take some photos, but the sky was a bit hazy and, even though it’s relatively close, it was still too far to provide a good view.
The obvious best place to get a great shot would be from a boat, but we don’t have one, and I wanted my photo!
So, it occurred to me that the fishing pier alongside the south side of the Skyway bridge might provide a good photo opportunity. For those who are not familiar with the fishing pier, here’s the situation. When the new Skyway was built, they tore down the middle section of the old Skyway but left the approaches to it standing and they turned them into drive-on fishing piers. I’ve seen them hundreds of times as I’ve driven on the Skyway, but I’ve never actually gone on them, because I’m not a fisherman. So this was my first time, and I hoped that maybe we’d get a little bit of a view.
We crossed the Skyway and turned off onto the Rest Area/Fishing Pier exit. We paid the admission fee (the ’sightseer’ rate, which I think was $3) and drove onto the old bridge, heading towards the middle of the bay. Speed limit on the bridge/pier was 5 MPH, which was sensible, ’cause there were hundreds of people on the bridge! As we got close to the end of the span, we parked and started walking.
I just have to say that we were so surprised and so amazed at what we encountered. We had expected a bunch of fishermen and women leaning over the side of the bridge, busy with their fishing, maybe looking askance at us for disturbing them. But what we saw were families, people having cookouts on portable grills, people with roped off areas having birthday parties, little children running around as happy as can be, watching their moms and dads and siblings fishing. We saw two men playing a giant game of what looked like maybe dominoes or checkers or backgammon as they waited for a bite. Everyone was friendly and welcoming and people smiled and said ‘hi’ to us and we felt quite at home.
If you love fishing, you should definitely go and check this place out! Even if you aren’t into fishing, you should still come by if you’d like to have a fantastic view of the bridge, as we did. And, yes, I did get my photograph!
Sunshine Skyway After Dark
