Locating 'The' Bridge

 

We visited a number of historic bridges on our trip to Linn County last week, walked across them, took a bunch of photos of them and from them.

And posed on bridges in a couple state parks.

But since learning about a bridge on one of the grass trails on the west side of the lake at Green Valley State Park, I've wanted to find it. We had been on the trail from the north end. Yesterday was the day to explore from the south end.

Beginning at the farthest west parking lot near the spillway didn't appear very promising.

All we got was wet feet from walking down closer to the lake shore.

No path there that we could find.

So we drove west to the highway, north to a dead-end gravel road, east on that road, past some turkeys in a soybean field and back into the park where there were choices about which way to go.

The left path lead to the causeway and we'd already been that far from the north, but at least we knew where we were.

The middle path only went down to the edge of the lake and back.

The path to the right, south, past the meadow daisies remained, so we went that way.

Past a pretty little, dainty, blue damselfly.

Past a huge brown, scary spider hiding somewhere there under the clover and weeds, near its web.

Until there it was, finally, about a half-mile from where we started in the parking area at the dead-end gravel road.

We were surprised to find that the bridge railings, that looked so much like wood in the picture we had seen, are actually iron.

We decided not to go any further on the trail, choosing instead to wait until another day to find the start of it from the south.

Heading back across the bridge, I noticed these two Fritillary Butterflies both fluttering arduously as though they were caught.

HD valiantly waded through the tall, dense weeds until he could get close enough to reach them with his walking poles.

They were caught in a spider web. He freed them, placing them away from the web.

Hopefully, they survived and after resting flew away.

I took a couple more pictures from the bridge - this one looking through the railings, showing all the lichen on them, down to the little creek.

And this one from the other side where the creek meanders on - adding its flow to the waters of Green Valley Lake.

It was a very successful trek, but the day was aready warming up and it wasn't even 10:00 a.m.

Next time, we'll walk the remaining sector of this grass trail, which will leave only one small section of Green Valley trails untrod.