Out Again - Still Learning

I went out again, this time heading to southwest Georgia.  A longish but rather nice drive to begin the day, once again traveling though parts of the state I'd not been to before and seeing a good number of little, sleeping towns.  First stop was the Kolomoki Burial Mounds which was a very pretty park and historic site.  Wandered around a bit, found the state geocache and also the historical site geocache.  I like the historic site caches as they all involve searching for answers in order to get the combination to the lock on the cache box.  Finding this one completes another 'set' of sites in Georgia's historic site challenge, my third.  No pictures of this little walk... don't know why now that I think about it.

From there I moved further west and visited George T. Bagby park, my first state park that pretty much bordered the lower Chattahoochee River which is the border between GA and AL at this point.  Actually, due to a dam, the 'river' here is actually a reservoir which forms a rather large lake.  A nice park and a good walk.

 

Kind of an eerie walk.  I think my first through a forest where most all of the trees had spanish moss hanging from them.  Pretty evident that this area floods with some regularity.

Next up was a visit to Providence Canyon State Park.  This park does not have a cache but it's a place I wanted to see.  Much better pictures than I have can be seen at:  http://gastateparks.org/ProvidenceCanyon  Do take a look at this as it is quite an extraordinary locale.  I arrived at the park at about 4:00 PM and the gates locked at 6:00 PM so I didn't have a lot of time but I did enjoy myself.  I got down to the bottom elevation of the canyons and sort of followed signs from there, I thought.

Getting to the bottom I found the 'path' was a bit wet with flowing water.  Kind of expected, I guess, what with this area being carved out by erosion and all.  Wasn't very deep but there really was no option to walking around the water.

 

I kept following what I thought was a path or trail.  There were boot prints so it wasn't like I was exploring unknown territory.  But, it did get very narrow and very steep.  I shot these photos looking up the path and you can't tell how steep it was.  You also can't tell how narrow.  This path is pretty much a boot-width wide.  Figuring I was doing the 'right' thing, I just kept going up...

... and up...

... and up.  I made it up to what can be seen at the top of this photo and the 'path' just ended!  I was on the face of a vertical wall and nowhere to take another step.  I knew I had to get out of the park so looking at the time on my phone, which now showed the wrong hour, I noticed that I had no telephone service... no signal.  Oh, this is not good.  I take a dive off this place and they won't find me until they build a mall here.  I just went back down.  It probably would have been much easier if I had turned around and went down as though coming off a ladder.  Well, now I know, but I didn't then.  Facing forward it was a bit of an experience :)

 

Retracing my steps to get out of the canyons I came across this trail which I guess I missed.  This provided a bit easier access out.  Along the way there were MANY signs warning that it was illegal to climb the canyon walls.  Well, they should have had a sign right where I did it.

 

The last stop for the day was at Florence Marina State Park which is where I planned to camp for the night.  It was pushing 7:00 PM when I arrived and I knew the sun was going down but I really wanted to get to this one instead of waiting until morning.  I took off on what I thought was the right trail but when the GPS was showing I was within 400 feet of the cache I knew something was wrong as I was standing at the edge of the water, looking at a dock that extended maybe 50 feet.  Of course, about 400 feet away was a pennisula which I realized was where I was supposed to be... now.  Off again I go, determined to get to the cache.  It was worth the trip!

 

The walk out the penninsula was soooooooo pretty.  Going to these parks on week days has pretty much given me the parks to myself and this was no exception.  The sound of a small motorboat approaching actually made the total experience more enjoyable.  I let the boat pass but did shoot a couple of pictures.  This is the direction the boat came from...

... and this is the direction the boat was heading.

At the cache site.  It was so pretty and so dog-gone peaceful.

It was getting dark pretty quick so I walked rather quickly to where I left the van, drove maybe 1 minute to the camping area and got settled in.  It was a very, very good day.

As for my 3rd camping experience, I'm telling you, things just keep getting more luxurious as I learn to do this better.  Notice the plush improvements:  A foam seat pad AND a placemat!  As for my dinner, a step up there as well as I brought along a nice, fresh kaiser roll onto which I placed my perfectly cooked Bubba Burger.  Life is good... life is good :)