"Is that bridge getting built?" - YES!

We have a bridge! (In the wise words of Meriwether Lewis - Oh! the joy) 

This past weekend Noah and Grant arrived to set the bridge. They worked on Friday to get the bank prepared. It had to hold a much larger excavator than the ones that were here for the original bridge day. 

On Saturday the big event finally happened, the bridge made it from just spanning the creek onto the abutments!

It happened in several stages of being hauled up onto the blocks, one side at a time, then adjusted so it was sitting level and in the right place.

These were taken just after Noah lifted the bridge onto the abutments on the farm side. I was skeptical that it was going to work, so it was a very exciting moment when I saw the bridge spanning the creek and in the right place!

Farmer John was given the honor of the first one to walk across the bridge. He was grinning all the way!

I've gotten so used to looking at the bridge sitting about 15 feet lower, it's a strange sight to see it on the abutments.

Noah and Grant spent the next couple days working on turning a rail car into a bridge. Here, Grant is cutting coupling parts off the car. They also spent a long time working to get the channel tracks cut off the center of the bridge. Although car tires would fit around those, it makes the surface smooth for shoveling or plowing.

This bridge has been well worth the wait. We are very pleased with how this part of the project turned out. The work is not done yet, however. Backfilling, guardrails, painting, and a nice new gravel driveway is in our (hopefully) not to distant future.  Still, we are going to take a moment and crack a bottle of champagne to celebrate this mighty accomplisment before proceeding to the next step.