July 20, 2018 – A Bridge Too Short

You may have heard of the movie, “A Bridge Too Far.” Well this the story of “A Bridge Too Short.”

Our rig is 13 feet 6 inches tall. The sign on this bridge claims a height of 13 feet 2 inches tall. There are also various weight limits which we believe we exceeded.

Unfortunately, there were no early warning signs at the top of the hill preceding the bridge or at the turnoff from the main road. Our GPS that is supposed to know about these situations failed us, too. There was just no warning that we were about to encounter this formidable obstacle. Suddenly, Denise noticed the sign indicating the height of the bridge and yelled “STOP!”

Our RV park destination for the day is just past the bridge and to the right. So close, but yet so far away.

We pulled off to the side of the road and as cars passed us in both directions, we contemplated our situation. After a few minutes discussion we agreed that turning around was not an option. You can’t tell from this picture but there is a rather large drop off on the left hand side of the road. We called the owner of the RV park and she confirmed that the bridge is, in fact, too low. She sent her husband over and he helped us back up a hill and around a corner to a point where we could turn around. We only stopped traffic for about 10 minutes.

Once we got turned back around, we were able to get back on the main road, and approach the bridge from the other side. By doing this, we no longer needed to attempt a crossing of the bridge too short. Needless to say, we were glad to get to our site that afternoon!

By the way, it turned out that the owner’s husband had previously attempted to take this bridge on himself and lost part of the top of his RV as a result.