For now, my Wikipedia involvement is limited to the article "List of crossings of the Upper Mississippi River." My somewhat verbose reasons are explaned below.
Fantasy photo tour:
As I near retirement I am seeking a "fantasy photo tour" (define "fantasy as "once in a lifetime" and define "tour" as "project"). Living in Maui means every time I step outdoors with my camera I am on a "fantasy photo tour"! Further, most of my bi-annual photo vacations are to the Philippines and Malaysian Borneo -- also "fantasy photo tour" destinations. I do visit the US Mainland now and then (my last trips were to New England '86, Nebraska in '95 and the American Southwest in '06). Because of these privileged trips I have already enjoyed, my retirement "fantasy photo tour" has to be something really special.
Mississippi River:
For a few years now I have contemplated a photo essay/project featuring the Mississippi River. I guess there are several reasons the Mississippi theme appeals to me. Although I was raised only 50 miles east of the Mississippi River in the NW corner of Illinois (Lena near Freeport , seat of Stevenson county) I didn’t actual see the Mississippi until I was 9 when my father took me on a trip to visit our relatives in Peru, Nebraska. We crossed the Mississippi on a rickety metal truss bridge near Savannah and I was impressed by the extensive backwater on the Iowa side which seemed to stretch on and on for miles (it does!) Another reason is Mark Twain. I recall many fine daydreams of floating down the Mississippi on a log raft ala Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer while straddling a fallen log in our bone-dry backyard! In my high school days I took two roundtrip pedal bike trips that crossed the Mississippi at Savannah (the first to Nebraska and back and the second from Spokane, Washington via the Rockies, Tetons, Yellowstone, Denver, Nebraska and Iowa for a total of 2,500 miles. As I pedaled across the magnificent Mississippi River the tree lined banks and high bluffs made lasting impressions on me.) I also had the pleasure to canoe on the Mississippi River as an Eagle Scout (although most of that trip was on the Rock River, we entered the Mississippi and paddled downstream for two more days).
Why bridges?
Those are some of the reasons a photo project involving the Mississippi appeals to me but why the bridge theme? I can only afford 20 to 30 days per trip so there isn't enough time for more ambitious themes like shooting all the villages or the myriad fabulously intriguing oxbows but I reasoned there couldn't be all that many bridges. A quick scan of a Rand McNally road atlas indicated about 30 bridges to Minnesota and perhaps another 70 in Minnesota. This estimate encouraged me to believe such a project would be manageable. I didn’t want just a single snap shot but a photo essay for each bridge. Seasonal themes of spring, summer, fall and winter would require 4 trips up and down the river. Early morning and late afternoon photos are important. Shots from upriver and downriver on each bank are also required. Finally, I want this photo project to include shots taken from the air (light plane or possibly an ultralight) and on the river (inflatable or folding boat). These goals meant I would eventually be posting about 20 photos per bridge or 2,000 total! I deemed this to be manageable and declared photographing the bridges of the Mississippi River as my 2008 New Years resolution!
Google Earth:
Over the '07 holidays, I used Google Earth to do low altitude "flyovers" of the Mississippi River and identified 165 bridges -- more than half lying upriver of the Twin Cities. Google Earth is exceptionally useful for this because you can see the actual bridges in the satellite imagery and extract their latitude and longitude. I set up an Excel spreadsheet to organize this information.
Wikipedia:
Another feature of Google Earth is there are many geo-tagged Wikipedia articles that pop up with a single mouse click! These articles are well documented and extensively linked. By following the links I discovered Wikipedia not only has these individual articles but they have also tabulated master lists of all the Mississippi River Bridges! I also discovered a reference to a book in two volumes entitled "Climbing the Mississippi River -- Bridge by Bridge" by a retired school teacher, Mary Charlotte Aubry Costello, who SKECTCHED all the bridges on her list! (I have her book on order and am excitedly waiting to read her descriptions of the remote bridges in northern Minnesota.) I also discovered Yahoo's photo sharing site "Flickr" and their user group "The Great Mississippi River Bridges Project." Their goal is to post photos for each and every Mississippi River bridge! (Sound familiar?)
OneNote:
The Wikipedia list I tackled first was a "complete list" of the upper Mississippi River Bridges. In trying to merge this info into my Excel spreadsheet, I quickly realized a Microsoft OneNote workbook would be a much better tool. (If you are not familiar with OneNote I strongly urge you to download the 60 day trial -- costs about $70 if you decide to activate. Think of OneNote this way: What Excel spreadsheets are to number crunching, OneNote notebooks are to information gathering.) During the merging process, I learned that I had "found" all but 1 (that was a RR bridge snuggled right next to a highway bridge) of the current bridges on their list. Interestingly, I found several "river crossings" NOT on their "complete list." I also discovered 30 or so of the listed bridges either had no coordinates at all or had incorrect values. I also found about 30 broken links for the upper bridges. However, their list did give data for "notable" historic bridges which I added to my list for historic completeness although the most I can hope to photograph are some abutments and piers. Even in this category of "notable historic bridges" I found several more by doing another "flyover" of the portion of the Mississippi River above the Twin Cities using TerraService topo maps.