Covered Bridges of Parke County Indiana

Silhouettes in the shade  It’s the Sim Smith Covered Bridge in Montezuma Indiana.  This is my favorite picture from the trip. 

Over the weekend we rode our motorcycles to Parke County Indiana, the “Covered Bridge Capital of the World” as they call themselves.  Parke County has more covered bridges than any other county in the United States.   In 1937 there were 41 covered bridges, but it’s down to 31 now.   We only hit about a dozen of them.  About have were still operational and the other half were roadside attractions.

We met up in Collinsville Illinois (just across the river from the arch) at 2:30 on Friday afternoon.  We headed on up I-70 to Terre Haute Indiana.  We decided to go on up to Rockville Indiana and called for reservations at a local motel.  We ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise (a chain co-owned by Outback Steakhouse and Jimmy Buffet) in Terre Haute before the 30–40 minute ride to Rockville.  We must have stayed there longer than we thought because the sun was about to set when we left.  We arrived at the Covered Bridge Motel after dark.  We sat around the gazebo and discussed our plans for Saturday. 

We had a brochure that mapped out several different routes to see the bridges.  We picked a couple to try.  Saturday morning we met at 8:00 at the White Horse Cafe across the street for breakfast.  Excellent food at very reasonable prices… especially the biscuits and sausage gravy.  After that we hit the road.

We visited about ten bridges on the Red and Blue routes, stopping at most for pictures.  Most were on paved roads, but a couple ended up being on (mostly packed) gravel roads.  I had a slight boo-boo on one of the gravel roads when I turned a corner the rider in front of me slowed due to loose gravel.  I put my feet down to stabilize my bike and then hit the front brake (a no-no) which caused my front wheel to slide in the loose gravel off the edge of the road.  Luckily my back tire stayed on the road.  A very nice guy who happened to be following us in his AT&T service truck stopped to help.  It took all of us to pull the front end of the bike up onto the road.  We thanked Mr. AT&T for his assistance and went on our way.  We avoided gravel roads after that.  I’ll grimace a little less the next time I pay my AT&T bill.

We got back to our motel about 6 pm.  We showered and headed out to dinner at the 36 Saloon Bar and Grill.  After dinner we picked up a few beers to take back to the gazebo at the hotel.  We sat out there until about 10:30 talking about our day and planning the next one. 

Sunday morning we packed up, ate breakfast at the White Horse again and headed out for the Brown route and a few more bridges before hitting road for home.  At breakfast we were talking about how this was our first overnight ride without our buddy Mel who died last November.  We each carry a little memento on our bikes to remember Mel.  We laughed how often we got turned around on this trip heading down the wrong road and had to keep making u-turns on those small roads (not always an easy task).  We talked about Mel’s sometimes unstellar sense of direction and said he must be with us on this trip.  At this point Mike said, his orange juice glass just moved.  We laughed and then as we all looked at it, the darn thing slid about 5 or 6 inches across the table.  It was probably just water from condensation that caused it to float a little, but we’re taking it to mean that Mel was with us on this journey.  We miss you Mel.

Anyway, we arrived home about 4:30 Sunday afternoon tired but fulfilled and with a keen knowledge of how pretty the bridges and roads of Indiana are. .  And as a bonus it was rain free.   It was a good trip

Here’s a video I put together from the pictures we took.  It’s 10:53 long.   The pictures are here.