This weekend, we headed up to Council Bluffs to visit Alli’s family. On Saturday, I spent the morning with Tyson and Ashley taking engagement pictures, which took us on a tour of Council Bluffs to places I hadn’t seen before, including the bridge pictured above, The Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge.

The bridge opened at the end of September and was built by Kansas City’s own HNTB for about $22 million. I was wondering what cities in their right mind would pay for such a bridge when my father-in-law informed me that the reason it was named for Bob Kerrey was because he had acquired about $18 million of that “wasteful pork barrel spending” from the government to help pay for it.

The bridge spans over 3,000 feet of the Missouri River and is an impressive structure that connects Omaha to Council Bluffs. The lights were donated by the Gallup organization, who have a training facility at the end of the Omaha side.

I’d love to see cool stuff like this start showing up in Kansas City. Omaha is a little ahead of the game when it comes to the development of their downtown and if Kansas City doesn’t get its act together soon, they’ll soon be sorely losing out when it comes to big events (case in point - the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials were in the Qwest Center in Omaha earlier this year).

If you’re ever in the area, you should check it out.

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