Covered Bridge tour of Bedford County PA

Saturday Sept 16 2023 was a gorgeous early fall day. We decided to check our list of places to see that we keep and decided a Top Down Day doing the Covered Bridge tour of Bedford County Pennsylvania was the thing to do.

The covered bridge tour is a driving tour that is done on your own and is created by the tourism council of Bedford county. You can find info of the tour in the Bedford county visitor guide or online at www.visitbedfordcounty.com

The tour consists of 9 covered bridges that were built in the late 1800’s and a place called Gravity hill that I will talk about later. All the bridges have been restored. Some are still drivable and some you can only walk over.

All the covered bridges were in great shape and you could just imagine the days when horse and buggy crossed instead of cars. The tour of the bridges took about 2 hours and we used the turn by turn written guide in the Bedford visitors guide to navigate. It is well written and easy to follow. The drive on Pennsylvania’s back country roads seeing farmland and a little slower life style was worth the trip even without the bridges.

One stop on the tour is a road called Gravity Hill. It is a place that they say defies gravity by moving your car up hill. There are 2 painted marks in the road that tells you where to start and stop but we started at the stopping point and it still worked. I have to say that the road looks to be sloped down hill and if you put you car in neutral it actually goes up the slope. If we ever intend to go back I am taking a level to see what the slope truly is on the road. To the human eye it definitely looks to be going down hill with a elevation change of maybe 8 to10 ft over about 150 ft span. Our Miata did drift up hill and increased in speed the farther we went. It is a baffling experience.

We highly recommend doing this Covered Bridge tour and Gravity Hill on a nice Top Down weather day. A few things to know.

1 There is limited parking to stop and get out to walk on the bridge to admire the construction. There was always at least 1 spot and most the time 2 spots for cars.

2 The Bedford visitor center was closed on Saturday so we ended up going to the Old Bedford Village to get information. That is also a great place to visit if time permits.

After the tour we decided to eat at the Golden Eagle Inn. It was ok. The main restaurant was closed so we ate in the brew pub. It was a small room and they did not have enough staff to serve everyone in a timely manner. However they had good food so it is a place we would go back to but there are several potentially good restaurants in Bedford and we will try them on future trips.