A week ago today, on the way home from a short trip to Eastern Missouri, we stopped at the Locust Creek Covered Bridge State Historic Site off Highway 36 between Laclede and Meadville.
Because of a change in the river channel many years ago, you actually cross the creek on a foot bridge. The covered bridge is about a quarter of a mile down what once was a main thoroughfare in Northern Missouri. Now it is a narrow footpath which, according to the warnings, could be muddy, even under water, during a heavy rain or a wet season. Indeed, as we walked down the path you could see where the water had washed away some of the gravel and there were some puddles and muddy places.
The bridge which once crossed Locust Creek now sets above the wetlands. It is the longest covered bridge I've ever seen. And while many covered bridges, like Madison County Iowa's, are celebrated, this one seemed almost forgotten.
Missouri had a very rainy spring. On the signage near the bridge you can see how high the water had been.
On the way back to the car I noticed what looked to me like an almost perfect natural bower. But for the mud, I would have been tempted to follow it to? A secret garden? A trysting spot?
"And bid her steal into the pleached bower
Where honeysuckles ripened by the sun
Forbid the sun to enter ....."
(Wm. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.)
We’ve been to that bridge.
ReplyDeleteWe were near the Union Covered Bridge, too. Now I wish we had taken the time to see it as well.
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