Earlier in the spring, when the weather turned nice enough for long walks, Holly and I twice trekked to the Delaware River. Walking along the Delaware isn’t that rare for us, but when we go, we usually visit the stretch that runs north along Center City.
For those more recent trips, we walked south of where we usually go which we had done only once before.
The first time, I went with my Yashica Mat-124G loaded with Kodak Ektar 100. It was a little cloudy out so the pictures didn’t quite turn out as nice as I hoped. The Ektar is rather vibrant so I was hoping for a better day to take advantage of that feature.
I somehow did something weird with the first frame and needed to take a second shot before being able to advance the film so ended up with an unplanned double-exposure.
After that glitch, the rest of the roll advanced fine.
Despite having a roll of film with only 12 exposures, I was not able to finish the roll along the river. We had a family obligation and needed to get home.
We enjoyed our walk and were a little disappointed we had to cut it short. When the weather was nice the following week, we decided to go back again. That time, I took my Minolta X-700 also loaded with Kodak Ektar.
What was interesting was how much the water level of the river had changed during the course of the week. When we arrived at the beginning of the trail, we immediately noticed how much lower the river was which can be seen by comparing the above shot of the water meter with the one I took on our second trip.
It was much sunnier on that second walk so the pictures turned out more like what I expected with the Ektar.
At one point, the trail was blocked by construction so we had to go back out to the street for a couple of blocks before going back and finding the trail again. Along the way, I took a picture of an abandoned movie theater which, I’m assuming, went out of business during the pandemic.
We were able to pick up the trail again and continued to enjoy our outing.
Although I wasn’t able to finish my roll in the Yashica during our walk along the river, I did finish it during our walk home.
Similarly, I was able to finish the roll in my Minolta X-700 on the walk to and from the river.
I’m glad we were able to return to that portion of the Delaware River so quickly. I would like to get back after the construction is finished so we can have an uninterrupted walk and see more of the river.
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