The best kind of road trip is one where the journey is the destination. Often times you locate things along the way that you didn’t even know existed.
Last weekend’s road trip destination was the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia but I built in time going to and from that would allow for some tangents.
The first was on the way down when a highway sign pointed me to a secondary road to go chasing a covered bridge.
This isn’t just any covered bridge. It is a humpback bridge which is designed with a slight arch in the middle.
I pause from this story to tell you another story.
The county where I live has four surviving covered bridges. It used to be five but the fifth was destroyed by arson a few years ago. That bridge was a humpback bridge and thought to be one of the rarest in the nation.
It was a common target for vandals but a spectacular sight to behold on the country road where it was located.
So when a sign pointed me toward another humpback bridge, I had no choice but to go find it.
Built in 1857, this bridge spans Dunlap Creek in Allegheny County, Virginia. It was closed to traffic in 1929, replaced by a modern bridge and left to be used by a farmer for hay storage for some time.
Luckily, it has been repaired to accommodate foot traffic. At a hundred feet long, it’s an impressive bridge and picturesque.
There’s a tidy little park here with room to picnic. If you’re so inclined you can scurry down the bank to skip stones through the stream.
If you go, the Humpback Bridge can be reached from Interstate 64 by taking exit 10 to Route 60. Just follow the signs from there.