My Own Personal Covered Bridge Festival

The weather here in the Midwest has been unbelievably spectacular this past week. Phenomenal, really. Sunny and 80 degrees. And the leaves on the trees have started to turn colors. It's autumnal perfection, people. So perfect that yesterday, my husband and I drove around Indiana looking at covered bridges.

Wait … covered what?

Covered bridges. As in bridges with sides and roofs. Indiana is known for basketball, John Mellancamp, having an usually large number of unclaimed dead bodies, and covered bridges. It's true. Look it up.

All told, we visited nine bridges. Bridges built about 150 years ago. That, my friends, is quite impressive. Some were in better condition than others, but all were uniquely cool.

We Hoosiers take our covered bridges seriously. So seriously that there is a ten day long festival dedicated to them every year. Of course, we Hoosiers will look for any reason to eat fried cheese on a stick and look at antiques, but the bridges are a really nice feature of the festival.

I thought the arched support pieces on the bridges were nifty and I made a slight error in judgement in mentioning my thoughts out loud. That caused my engineer husband to elaborate on the marvel that is the arch shape and deliver a mini-lecture on it's importance.

According to my mini-lecture, arches aren't just for my amusement but hold a pretty significant purpose. I still think they are rather nifty.

I soon tired of the arches and amused myself by looking out the windows. Some of the best scenery of the day was through the windows on the bridges.

Sorry about the graffiti in this next photo. Covered bridges are quite susceptible to graffiti. I kinda like how the right side of the window frame says 'Think outside the box'. Either that or it says 'Think outside the bun'. I can't quite tell. Both are pieces of good advice, though.

Of all the topics near and dear to Hoosiers, aren't you glad I chose covered bridges instead of unclaimed dead bodies?

Yeah. Me too.

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