Bridgeton Mill

The stop at Pipeline road was towards the end of my Monday ride (October 8). At the beginning I got mixed up on my way out of Rockville, and ended up at a tourist place known as Billie Creek. It has one of Parke County’s many covered bridges.

But since I was here, I stopped to get a photo before heading back towards Rockville. While doing so, a van with an older couple pulled up. Well, maybe not much older than me. They wanted to know if there were any more bridges than this, and how one went about touring the bridges. I pleaded the ignorance of an outsider, but told them that if they went towards town and stopped at the visitor center on their left, they could get a map that would show them where the bridges were. It’s also the map I was using for bicycling. They seemed pleased to get that much information from me.

Bridgeton was one of my destinations. This is where I had meant first stop to be — not Billie Creek. It’s near the old Isaac McCoy mission school, too.

In fall 2006 I had ridden here and had a chance to ask the owner if he knew where the Isaac McCoy mission had been. He knew about McCoy, but all he could say about the location was that it had been somewhere around there. Here is the Bridgeton Mill web site. But he did know a lot about the Ten O’Clock Treaty Line, which runs just on the other side of Raccoon Creek from the mill.

This year I had done a little more research and had a pretty good idea where McCoy’s mission had been. It had been a few miles to the southwest. But I wanted to stop here first, anyway, to connect my rides together. I like to ride roads I’ve never been on before, but I like them to connect to places I already have been.

There were tourists here, beating the rush of the upcoming Bridge Festival, I suppose. I was minding my camera when a woman commented that I had ridden a long way.

What (I thought)? How did she know where I had come from. Was it obvious that I was from Michigan?

But she was the woman in the van at Billie Creek. She was impressed that I had ridden so far. (It was maybe a little over ten miles from Billie Creek–not all that far–but I don’t mind if people are impressed.)

Next thing she was telling another tourist about me. Turns out this other tourist and her husband had a hobby (obsession?) of visiting covered bridges. I wish I had written down the number she told me, but they had visited far more covered bridges in Pennsylvania (where they were from), Ohio, Indiana, and elsewhere than I would ever have guessed existed. I took a photo of her next to the Bridgeton bridge, but we haven’t yet made e-mail contact so I can get a release from her to post it. She told me about a web site that lists all the covered bridges. I don’t think this is the one she meant, but it starts to give the idea.

I hung around Bridgeton for a while before heading on over to what I think is most likely the McCoy mission site.