… And then things got cray. I’ve mentioned this before, but when Riverside, Illinois floods, it *really* floods. Water starts flowing through people’s dining rooms, the police start traveling by rubber dingy and bridges become ornamental decorations.

In 2013, when the Des Plaines River turned into the Mississippi Junior and was 12 feet above normal (this is not an exaggeration), I grabbed my tripod and headed to the swinging bridge. What I found shocked me: the water was making contact with the bridge. What made this even more interesting was that, because the bridge is a suspension bridge, the river’s strong current was causing the bridge to sway significantly more than usual.

Anyone who has been on the bridge at any point knows about the joys of standing in the middle and bouncing up and down. Well, the river was doing this for me in spades. There was such a violent amount of movement that most of my pictures came out blurry.

It was a surreal view to get to the other side of the bridge and see water everywhere. The industrial strength lights on the bridge beautifully illuminated the water, creating an almost optical illusion. If you don’t know that there’s 12 extra feet of river there, it would probably take a minute to figure out what is going on.