Grave Creek: More than just a cool covered bridge

There is a covered bridge you can see from I-5 in southern Oregon, so while driving home from an epic “Troll Quest” near Seattle last month, I stopped to walk through the bridge shortly after sunrise.

That was cool. And the perfect way to end a perfectly awesome road trip.

First, as one friend pointed out, the bridge perfectly fit the theme of my quest to see all five Thomas Dambo Trolls near Seattle, an ambitious/silly dream that she described as “wandering around in search of wooden sculptures.” But also, the bridge’s name, Grave Creek, made it an even more appropriate stop for my trip.

Because the bridge was named after a teenager who died nearby while on a very different quest, one that was far more ambitious than mine, and not the least bit silly. Because she was part of a wagon train, heading west in the 1840s in search of a better life, when she fell ill and died at 16. 

The girl was buried near a large oak tree, and when the tree was later removed to build a road, the nearby waterway and bridge above it were named Grave Creek in honor of her resting place.

Learning her story made me even more grateful I had completed my quest, because the night before I stopped at the bridge, I learned that a family member was in the hospital after a nasty fall earlier that day, and likely would never go on another adventure again.

So walking across that bridge the next morning, all I could think about was how much that family member would like to be walking. And that no matter how silly the quests we dream about seem to others, we should all strive to complete all the adventures we can while still alive and able-bodied.

I say as long as you can get out of bed and walk, ride or drive, head out to chase down whatever you’ve been dreaming about, be it trolls or covered bridges.

Why do so many of us love covered bridges?

I know I’m definitely not the only one who loves covered bridges, but I don’t know why people are so drawn to them. A friend suggested that a lot of us fell in love with them because of the movie “The Bridges of Madison County,” but I've been infatuated with covered bridges since before the movie or the novel came out, maybe because there was a neat one in my hometown.

One of the first things I asked my father when he started teaching me to drive was if we could go through the covered bridge, though it was narrow and rickety, only supporting one car at a time.

The bridge led into a shopping center that I never needed to visit, but I often planned my drives around that bridge, because it made me smile every time I drove through it.

And so did the bridge at Grave Creek, though I didn’t drive through it, just walked back and forth with the sun peeking through the windows, admiring the super cool windows and cool wood forming the ceiling.

You can walk through it with me here: