Again, we have to include a picture from each bridge to verify that we really did find it. Besides, it's fun to take pictures of historic bridges in beautiful settings.
With a total of 31, Parke County has the largest number of covered bridges of anywhere in the world. So it seems obvious that they would host the world's biggest covered bridge festival. It runs for ten days in the fall, and it is scheduled to start just four days from now.
But we decided that it would be more fun to travel these little roads and have these bridges to ourselves. So we purposefully arrived before the crowds of the festival got here.
It turns out that was a great decision. When we got to the little town of Mansfield today, we found that this is one of the hubs of the festival. Because they are already setting up for the festival, the picturesque Mansfield Bridge is already sandwiched between a BBQ trailer and a corn dog place. It takes a little away from the bridge pictures, doesn't it?
We walked through the bridge, and found a sea of vendor tents and food trailers already setting up. It's going to be a zoo during the festival!
The historic mill is at the edge of the mayhem, and every empty space in town is being turned into temporary retail space.
We found out that two MILLION people usually arrive to these tiny towns during the ten-day festival each fall. We can't imagine what that will look like!
But we're glad that we'll be missing that spectacle. We have now arrived to the tiny town of Bridgeton, where this unusually long bridge has its own waterfall flowing underneath.
That fast-flowing water once powered the wheel of the Bridgeton Mill, built here in 1823.
Just like in Manchester, Bridgeton is being transformed into a giant retail stop for two million people. We purchased a slice of premium-priced pumpkin cake roll made from flour milled right at the old mill. That was our expensive snack for the road today.
We were glad to get away from the crazy little towns that already feel crowded with only the workers setting up the temporary trinket and food shops.
Now we better understand the driving loops that have been set up, with arrows that indicate which direction you must drive.
With two million people on these narrow dirt roads, everyone should be going the same direction. We also noted that some of the bridges weren't included in those pre-determined loops.
We didn't mind going off the main roads to find the more obscure bridges, but we probably wouldn't have tried that with the kind of traffic that the festival will bring.
We're guessing that the Parke County farmers aren't thrilled with that kind of traffic on their country roads while they are trying to complete corn and soy bean harvest.
The grain trucks and trailers made our drive more interesting even without the festival traffic.
So while we usually run towards interesting festivals, this time we actually ran away from the covered bridge festival.
After two full days of bridging, this was the first time that we had to share a bridge with anyone else. We actually had to wait until the other group moved out of the way to get this picture from the inside of the bridge.
But it was also the first time we got a picture of the two of us together inside that same bridge.
We had two days of temperatures in the 80's, and we keep hearing that is unseasonably warm for this time of year. But we've used that warm weather to explore the nooks and crannies of Parke County, Indiana, and we certainly enjoyed all her covered bridges.
After two full days we are satisfied that we have seen most of them, walking and/or driving through each one.
We also discovered that Parke County is home to a good number of Amish residents. Driving down these country roads, it was fun to see young Amish couples walking down the road together on Sunday evening date night. We also saw barefoot school children walking home from school, with their straw hats and lunch boxes. No pictures, but we love the feel of Amish country.
We also like stopping at the Amish bakeries and stores that we found in the northeast section of the county. We bought an entire pumpkin cake roll for just one dollar more than the slice we bought earlier today. And those peanut butter and chocolate buck-eye candies were half the price we saw them for sale at the mill.
We've had a great time at the covered bridges of Parke County, Indiana, and for once we're so glad that we missed the festival!
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