The road to get there got
narrow and in some spots I was suspicious that erosion was making it
very likely that soon enough the road was going to slip away from the
hillside. I took great care to stay away from the edge... It
was so disconcerting I decided we would not come back this way on the
way home. The red dots on the 3-D map below show our route with
the part behind the mountain being particularly "interesting"...
Finally we got to Jenkinsburg Bridge.
June 2007
I found these
articles in the Dominion Post. Just some additional info to
demonstrate what this road is like:
That was also not
terribly confidence inspiring. The bridge was built in 1912, and
it looks like it has not been touched since except for the deck which
looks like 2x4's laid next to each other all the way across. I
waited until I had seen a vehicle cross and observed for myself that the
bridge didn't even move. I asked several people that were milling
about and they all said yes, vehicles drive across it all the time...
It would be just my luck...
So I drove across
it. Needless to say we made it just fine. We parked on the
other side and walked down to the put-in area that was newly set up by a
local outfitter who did a land swap to get control of it.
The spot is
beautiful. The Cheat runs roughly North and Big Sandy comes in
from the East. It is a great starting point for some and a great
finishing point for others.
From there, we
walked back up to the Jeep and gratefully continued East along the road.
It stayed very remote and the road quite rough. Nothing new for
us.
Pretty soon we
reached the parking space for the geocache we had set out to find.
So I parked the Jeep and we headed into the woods along the foot trail.
It was muddy in
spots but still a nice walk.
The last few
hundred yards was a bit of a struggle with the three kids, the briars
here and there, and the soft footing due to the recent rains. But
we managed to get down to the cache without any troubles.
The kids started
looking around with my warning them constantly not to dig into rock
piles because they might find a snake or three. No snakes today.
Pretty soon Jon Paul and Teddy suggested that I was standing on the
cache. And upon closer examination, this proved true. So we
brought out the cache and checked it out.
Given that it was
newly hidden, there was lots of good stuff inside. Ted and Tom
picked out some stuff, I signed the log book, and pretty soon we were
walking back up the trail.
It was hot and
buggy the whole time but we had a pleasant visit overall though Jon Paul
did slip on a damp log. He was lucky to fall into me instead of
the rock behind me.
We pounded the
fluids on the way back up the hill to the Jeep.
We opted to take
the high road for the more dry footing and promise of a little downhill
back to the Jeep.
