Disaster

Well, I was talking about building a 4 foot long trestle to cover the ravine i created.  Now, after testing it I have found that there are several structural problems with it, and after leaving it outside to let he wood get used to the climate, I have found that a simple wind has knocked pieces off.  so I have decided to scrap the trestle idea and leave it inside for display instead.  The broken pieces are fixable, but the trestle obviously is not durable enough.

So now what do I do?  Well, to close the 4 foot gap is out of the question as that provides drainage and a place for over spill to leak out of the pond so some sort of bridge must cross the ravine.  I do have a covered bridge, and I also have other "scrap" pieces of lumber so here is what I have for ideas so far:

• Make bridge abutments out of real sized lumber such as 2X4s then cross the ravine with the covered bridge.  The bridge is only 20" long though, so I would have to back fill on either side of the bridge, leaving the middle open.  The bridge might look small, but it is prototypical, and gives great photo shots.
• Create a temporary bridge from scrap pieces.  This would span the whole ravine without the need for back fill and provides a goo long bridge like I had hoped, but I do have one problem with this idea.  considering my last bridge attempt didn't work out, I am skeptical about buildignanother bridge completely from scrap.

Any ideas anyone?