Bridge Continued

At the end of week 1 the foundations were poured along with a temporary slab to build the first precast arch on..

Here is the temporary slab with plywood nailed down and the first arch form in place.

The rest of the interior forms..

The first rebar cage. There was another cage tied later that is not shown. 

The first arch was poured at the end of week 2. That was a 15 hour day and I did have some help from a friend. I have been working 2-3 long days per week on the bridge

2 more pours to go!

New Bridge

Since we have lived here, we have had to cross the creek using a ford in order to get to the house. A bridge has been on the wish list for a long time now and after a rough winter it was moved to the top.

This bridge will be similar to the one we built over Beaver Creek in 2007, except that it will be bigger.

I drew plans for the bridge in Sketchup. 

Step 1: make curved templates for the top and bottom plates of the forms. The inside radius of the arch is 13'-1" and the outside is 13'-9". The arch will be 8 inches thick.

Last time I made very large forms that proved to be difficult to handle. This time I made them in 4' long sections. There are 8 inside and 8 outside forms.

Here is the bridge location before starting work:

Step 2

Thursday I rented a mini excavator and dug out both banks.

Two dump truck loads of rip rap (large rocks) were delivered and placed in the holes.

After placing the rip rap:

Step 3

Reinforced concrete spread footing will be poured on the rip rap. Here is the first form going into place:

The creek is rising fast now that warmer weather has started melting the mountain snow. Hopefully I can get the concrete foundations poured before it gets too high.

Ghost Ranch

A few miles north of Yellowstone is one of the first dude ranches. It operated from 1912-1939 and was eventually acquired by the US Forest Service. They don't advertise it and not that many people know about it or visit it. This past summer Terry and made the 1.5 mile hike in to check it out. 

There were several original buildings still in good shape

Several had restoration work completed.

In the main lodge there were some old photos of how it looked back in the 20s and 30s.

There was no one around and the lodge doors were locked except for one side door. I had called the Forest Service office before going and they said it was ok for us to go inside and look around.

One wing of the lodge had a billiard room with the old pool table still there.