Building a Bridge

We have a seasonal creek, actually a few seasonal creeks, on the property. Several of them have simple concrete culverts over them, but this is the main one you cross over so we wanted to make it special. With no shortage of rocks on the property, and I mean lots of rocks, we decided to build a rock bridge. Five days, 4000 pounds of mortar mix ( that's two tons people!), lots of water to drink (since the weather was in the mid to high 90's all week), and some help from each of the family members and Bro. Hatch, who is an experienced stone mason and just so happened to need the work, and we end up with a fun bridge that will hopefully give us years of enjoyment. Eventually, we will plant some trees and shrubs around it, but that's for another time!

This is where we started once Monty and McKay put in the culverts and the gravel trucks brought in the gravel.

Monty and Bro. Hatch worked the first day scraping away the extra gravel with the excavator, setting up a plumb line, and placing the first stones.

This is how far we got at the end of the second day.

Day three was spent on the other side.

We decided to put some sort of cap on top of the rocks to make them look more finished. We spent day four finishing the caps on the first side, then going to work on the second side with more stones.

On day five, everyone one had the "blessing" of working, including Hyrum!

Monty mixing up one of the many batches of mortar mix. We used over 50 sacks of mortar mix...80 lbs. each. Thanks Grandpa Mel for the use of the cement mixer and generator!

Placing the capstones on the second wall. That was a LONG day!

Of course, with the hot weather, one of the coolest places was inside the culvert.

Hyrum had fun in there, too!

If you had to be in the sun, a hat was essential. Hyrum is sporting his 50¢ garage sale hat. So cool!

At the end of day five...mission accomplished!