The Hood Canal Bridge, which crosses the Hood Canal and links the Olympic Peninsula with the Kitsap Peninsula and the route to Bremerton, Tacoma and Seattle, is currently closed for all traffic. The east half of the bridge is being replaced and it is set to reopen in the middle of June. Even though there are other options to reach the peninsula, having the bridge taken away essentially feels like severing the link to the rest of the world. Many friends over there thought they needed to go to the mall and stock up on their shopping and get a bunch of things taken care of because of the thought of being “stranded” during the six week closure.

But there are just a few weeks left and WSDOT has been keeping a website, a blog and flickr page documenting the replacement through photos and video. As someone who enjoys watching the building of bridges on the Discovery Channel, I always love footage of bridges. Check out this cool video from WSDOT documenting the removal of the east truss:

Growing up on the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington, I often felt completely isolated as if we had in fact been on an island istead of being completely linked with the “mainland”. If I needed anything special, I had venture off the peninsula to find it. I would’ve loved to have access to something like Amazon.com back when I was growing up! The nearest shopping area was about an hour and a half drive to Silverdale and known to us as “the mall” so whenever someone said they were going to go “hang out at the mall” it wasn’t a couple hour excursion, it was a full on day trip.

There are two ways off the Peninsula, not including driving down the Pacific coast. The typical, easiest and most pleasant is driving over the Hood Canal bridge and then the least pleasant is actually driving around the canal which is alright if you have a lot of time but really not the best. But ever since I was a kid I loved crossing the Hood Canal. The canal is beautiful and the design of the floating bridge allows for unobstructred views in both directions. I remember many times seeing a submarine in the canal on it’s way to or from the base in Bangor. Once there were even a bunch of guys hanging out on top. Good times. And this summer, I plan on heading up there for some camping in my favorite spot in the world. And when I go, I’ll get to cross the newly replaced east side of the bridge.

images and video via WSDOT