We're in the Covered Bridge Capitol of the World!

It's no mistake that we showed up in Rockville, Indiana, on this week of lovely fall weather. We are here on a mission to see as many covered bridges as possible.

Armed with a map from the local visitor's center, we took off on an easter-egg-like-hunt that took us across the entire county.

Of course, after we found each bridge we were obliged to take a picture (or two or three or . . .) So the blog will include at least one picture of each of the covered bridges we got to experience today.

We don't intend to blog about the names and details of each bridge, but we found that the bridges of Parke County were built anywhere from 1856 to 1920. Even the newest are almost 100 years old!  These are really old pieces of history, and it was so much fun to get to experience this slice of Americana.

In this parade of covered bridges, we have to notice that they're all beginning to look alike. So we must pause to include the longest bridge in the county.

This is the West Union bridge, and it gets two pictures because it is so big!

The chamber of commerce map lined out approved routes that would take the average tourist to most of the bridges.

But we've never been average tourists. So we made up our own routes, and didn't follow the one-way arrows on the map.

The picture below is just one of the little country roads that we were on today. The road was so narrow that it felt like we were taking a hike in the woods, except we were driving. It's not the kind of road that would be fun to meet a car coming from the opposite direction.

But it was great fun finding a covered bridge that few people ever experience in the middle of a forest.

Other times we would spot a covered bridge from across a harvested field of corn. We were taking pictures of the billowy white clouds, but if you look closely you can see a covered bridge peeking out of the trees beneath those clouds.

Even though we were officially hunting for covered bridges, sometimes we had to stop the car for other things. Like, who could refuse to take a picture of this great old red barn?

Instead of being surrounded by forest, many times we were surrounded by tall corn fields. These Indiana farmers try to use all the ground, and we could almost reach out the car window and touch the corn stalks as we drove these narrow country roads.

Those narrow roads got us close to harvest, where this combine was emptying another bin of corn into the truck that will transport it to the grain elevator.

We love driving down country roads, so having a destination that takes us here is a great way for us to spend the day.

We are generally driving 3-4 miles between covered bridge sightings. So even on these slow country roads, it's never too long before we have another reason to get out of the car and take another picture.

Denisa is obviously a fan of covered bridges. But we found out today that she's a fan of old barns as well.

We found this lovely old round barn in the middle of a field of soy beans. It isn't close to any house, and it's completely surrounded by beans. But someone has obviously taken good care of this old barn.

It's also obvious that these soy beans are about ready for harvest.

We're back in the forest, where we are seeing more evidence that autumn is here. We are smitten by the changing color of the leaves. It's equally cool to drive these one-lane dirt roads covered with fallen leaves.

Parke County touts itself as having more covered bridges than any other county in the world. It lists 31 different bridges on the map we were using.

Our route today takes us all over the northern half of the county, and we put 90 miles on the car.

We thought that "Cross this bridge at a walk" was the name of one of the first bridges of the day. But we would see that "speed limit" posted on most of the bridges today.

Our last bridge of the day was one of the best. Narrows Bridge was built in 1882 over Sugar Creek. It's on the edge of Turkey Run State Park, which looks like a lovely place to go hiking. But we're not fond of Indiana's state park system, which charges out-of-staters like us a $10 entrance fee for a hike.

Like about half the bridges we saw today, the traffic has been diverted to a modern bridge. From this angle we can see the white arch of the newer bridge in the background. We can also see Mark, standing on the rocky ledge on the left shore of sugar creek.

As we snapped this picture, a young eagle soared over our heads. We didn't even know we were in eagle country on this covered bridge day.

So Narrows Bridge is now only a pedestrian bridge. Without traffic going through the bridge, Mark had time to crawl up in the window. That's his leg on the outside, as he's sitting on the window sill and waving for the camera.

Whew! That has been a full day of covered bridges--and we had a great time. It was so much fun we're going to do it again tomorrow!