The old iron bridge on a dead dirt road... (with some pics)

BLOT: (09 Jul 2011 - 03:11:51 PM)

The old iron bridge on a dead dirt road... (with some pics)

I was going to post some pics of our outing to Blue Lake but of the ten or so we took, one was accidently obscene, one was a duplicate, one was horrendously boring and misangled, one was the back of a car, one was proof of why you take pics before sunscreen is applied (no matter what protests the wife has), one was proof of why trying to look dead-faced and stony in sunny pic is a mistake [see above pic], and one was proof of why taking long distance of shots of a man wading out into water is probably a mistake unless you trust your zoom. All in all, only three didn't get deleted and they got touched up some but...eh, I'll try again some other times. Which leaves me with a slight pickle. I only have two other occasions photographed. There were a pair of photos from our trip back north, but we get one of Sarah looking like a madwoman and a photograph meant to be about how some gas-pumps looked like 1970s robot cariacatures but I'm pretty sure that was the severe sleep dep talking. So, you get these four photos, and it is a neat enough story.

Halfway, or so, between Evergreen and McKenzie on Highway 31 you can get off and follow 84 up towards Andalusia. This means little to most of you, sure, but bear with me. Along the on 84 you will come across a dirt road with an E-911 road sign declaring it Long Branch (or maybe it is Longbranch, I'll call it by both just in case). Take that. Then head on down until you get to a fork and hold left. I think. Anyhow, leave Longbranch behind and go down Cohasset Road. There used to be a Cohasset, AL. My mom says the store, there, was an important general store for all the old-timers to get supplies. Over time, it became another town died and reborn a vaguely named community. Flatrock, AL, the Southern one, was similar. Now it is just a couple of dirtroads with houses on them, all with Evergreen addresses. In 20-years, McKenzie might be the same way, except the addresses will say Georgiana, AL.

You drive along and you will pass, on your left, a sort of parking spot that you can get out and go wading at. Used to be a grist mill off down in that spot. You can still some of the old wooden posts, some wall structures, and even some gouges made into the flat rock of the creek-bed, probably told old water-wheels and such. Fact is, if you want, head slightly upstream (and I do mean slightly) and you get this painfully rocky spot where you wade down into some gravel and sand and if you dig around here for any length of time, you will find some quantity (as in hundreds) of petrified shark's teeth.

If you go downstream about a quarter of a mile, maybe less, or drive down the road a bit, you will come to an old iron bridge. It is not right on the road, but over to the side. There will be a gate stopping you from going down any further. Stop there, head out into the woods to your left and you'll see it right off. Let's say the bridge is nameless because, well, I doubt bridges all have names even when my mom is convinced it must be called something. I'll just call it the Cohasset bridge. Seems fine to me. The coolest thing about this bridge is that the road that once went across is now gone, so it is literally a fair sized bridge with no purpose (the roads that it used to connect are both semi-existent, so I won't say "nowhere"). If you can get across it, probably on foot or by swimming across and climbing up, you can get to Huggins Mill Road on the other side, another dirt road. Now, I don't know if Huggins Mill was the grist mill or not, but there you go. Old iron, rusting, rotting bridge over a brown water creek with no roads touching it. I have no idea how deep the water is up under it, but it must not be that deep because no way would the people from that part of the state pass up on a bridge to leep off of.

Here is the bridge on BridgeHunter.com, if you are into that sort of thing.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: July 2011