The Bridges of Madison County

NOTE:  This blog is part of the "1980 Buick LeSabre Road Trip - October 2011 Series".  Branelle and I flew up to Minnesota and drove back to Texas in her grandmothers 1980 LeSabre, a gift from her parents and Nana.  We took about a week getting back because, as I reminded Nel on a number of occasions, "sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination".

The Bridges of Madison County

So, when planning a road trip I try to find interesting things to see and do along the way.  To be perfectly honest, the route from Brainerd, Minnesota, to Houston, Texas, isn't really the most interesting one that Nel and I have attempted.  I knew the trip was coming quite a bit in advance, but I kept putting off planning any stops because I just wasn't finding anything that grabbed my interest.  Then, while flipping through some random web sites about Iowa, I realized that Madison County, of book and movie fame, was located just south of Des Moines.  I made a hotel reservation for our first night of the trip in Des Moines and started planning our Buick's bridge assault!

I have to admit that I had never seen the 1995 movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood, and I had certainly never read the book.  That said, the title is so iconic that I couldn't resist the chance to get a few pics of our maroon Buick traversing the covered bridges from the film.

 

The town that the bridges (there are 6) are in and near is Winterset, Iowa.  Aside from being the third star of the movie, Winterset has one other claim to fame:  It is the birthplace of one Marion Robert Morrison - better known as Mr. John Wayne!  There's a little 4-room home that is now a museum and a statue, but it's not really much to look at to be honest.  We certainly stopped by though since we were in town.

The Duke...on a van...outside his birthplace.

The bridges are spread out all over the county.  I had planned a route that took us first to Hogback Bridge on our way into Winterset.  The county is very rural and mostly farms, so I shouldn't have been surprised when we turned off of Highway 169 that the road to the bridge was entirely gravel.  The car got filthy and was sliding all over the loose gravel so I had to take it a bit easy.  I had planned to take a picture of the Buick driving over each bridge (not really sure why - it just seemed like something fun and random to do).  Unfortunately, when we got to Hogback we discovered that you can no longer drive over the bridges at all.  They are simply tourist attractions now.

The LeSabre getting as close to Hogback Bridge as allowed.

Not as excited about "walking" over The Bridges of Madison County as I would have been about driving over them.

After Hogback, we headed west to Roseman Bridge.  Roseman was the primary bridge featured in the book and movie.  It's the first bridge visited by the two main characters and where their ashes are ultimately spread in the end (spoiler alert - a little late).  It’s actually a bit of a drive and the last 5 miles or so is all gravel, but it was also supposed to have a nice gift store right next to it.  We found the bridge, but the gift store was closed so we took our pictures and headed into Winterset.

Roseman Bridge.

Inside Roseman.  The reason the bridges were "covered" was to protect the very expensive timbers used for the floor.

It was about lunch time and I had read that the Northside Café, which had been in town since 1876, had been in an important scene from the film so we headed into town and, after a quick stop at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum, we grabbed a booth for lunch.  The food was terrible, the service even worse, but it was kind of fun.  There was an old hat hanging on the rack connected to our booth.  Having never seen the movie, I wondered if it was left by Eastwood as a gift to the café or something.  I asked our waitress about it and she said "No.  Someone just left that here one day and no one's ever done anything with it".  Oh well.

Wondering if that hat belonged to Clint Eastwood...and where our waitress was.

A Northside Cafe drive-by.  Big pimpin up in the I to the O to the WA!

After lunch we drove up to Cedar Bridge and were pleasantly surprised to find that we could actually drive over this one.  The reason is undoubtedly because this bridge was actually burned down by an arsonist in 2002 and was rebuilt in 2004.  I was way more excited about this than I should have been.  I made Nel jump out and shoot me entering the bridge and then run across and shoot me coming out of the bridge.

Cedar Bridge - one I can actually navigate the maroon land yacht across.

Emerging victorious in my quest to traverse a bridge in the Buick.

Next it was back into town to the Winterset City Park where the Cutler-Donahoe Bridge is located.  The bridge was really nice and the park itself was surprisingly nice for such a small town.  They even had a hedge maze.  Of course we played in it.

Cutler-Donahoe Bridge.

Hedge maze - always fun.

We headed east out of town to the Holliwell Bridge next.  It's more gravel roads to get there, but it's on the way to I35 so it was OK.  Holliwell isn't the prettiest location of the six (the bridges themselves all kind of look alike) so we just snapped our picture and took off.

Holliwell Bridge - not the best one, but it was in the movie. 

The final bridge is actually located in the town of St. Charles right off of I35.  It's called Imes Bridge and is located in a small city park.  There was an older couple there trying to take pictures so we jumped in and gave them a hand. 

Imes Bridge - quest complete!

 

Mission complete!  All six "Bridges of Madison County" seen and photographed.  The bridges themselves aren't really all that interesting, and if you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all.  It was fun though.  It was kind of like a "bridge scavenger hunt".  They weren't as easy to find as you would imagine in a small town.  I was curious about the movie after completing our quest, so when we got to Wichita Falls I asked my mom if she had the movie.  She didn't, but she went out and bought it and we watched it.  It's TERRIBLE!  I love Clint Eastwood, so I hate saying this, but it was really one of the worst movies I've ever sat through.  Slow, pointless, sad, poorly acted (Streep was nominated for Best Actress for this one - crazy) and not even remotely interesting.  The bridges are more entertaining than the movie!