Long Ride Down Lake Wichita Boardwalk Pier

The long awaited completion of the 2020 version of  Lake Wichita Boardwalk has arrived. The anticipated Grand Opening event has been postponed until the Coronavirus Pandemic has subsided making it safe to encourage crowds to gather in close proximity.

The Boardwalk seemed way bigger than I had anticipate it would seem after months of watching it be constructed.

In the view above we are at the end of the Boardwalk, looking at Lake Wichita Dam and the mainland.

Above we are on the aforementioned mainland, looking west across the finished Boardwalk. To the left of the Boardwalk, in the water, that is a two man kayak with some sort of pedal mechanism propelling the watercraft. I do not recollect seeing such a thing before. It looked fun, and seemed to be making easy headway against the strong wind and waves.

A Lake Wichita Boardwalk monument has already been installed, making note of how this Boardwalk came to be. That is Mount Wichita you see in the distance, hovering above the horizon and the lake and the monument.

I have no idea what is up next with the Lake Wichita Revitalization Plan. This plans seems to lumber along in slow motion.

But not nearly as slow as that town to the southeast of Wichita Falls known as Fort Worth, a town which has been limping along with a Trinity River Revitalization Plan called the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, for most of this century, so far not completing anything as complex as this new Lake Wichita Boardwalk.

With, for example, three simple little bridges being built over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, being stuck in slow motion construction mode, for no sensible reason, for six years, which originally begin being built in 2014, with a then astonishing four year building timeline, now stretched well into this new decade.

There is another construction project underway in Wichita Falls, the completion of which I look forward to. There are three gaps in the Circle Trail which circles around Wichita Falls. One of those gaps is the project underway, connecting the Wichita Bluff Nature Area section of the Circle Trail to the Lucy Park section of the Circle Trail.

One of the other two Circle Trail gaps involve building a bridge over some railroad tracks. I believe that section is already designed and ready to build. The other Circle Trail gap is between the southwest end of Lake Wichita Park and the existing Circle Trail which runs alongside Barnett Road. There has been some talk of building this connector out over Lake Wichita. Methinks that is the best solution, an elevated trail above the lake.

What I can say with almost 100% certainty is that Wichita Falls will finish its Circle Trail long before Fort Worth finishes up with its long troubled Trinity River Vision Boondoggle..