As if foreshadowing of things to come for Gretchen and I, we took advantage of a little free time and disappeared together for a weekend with just the two of us. To put another "check" on our Yurts of Georgia State Parks, our destination was Red Top Mountain State Park where we stayed at "the" yurt – they only have one. We arrived on Friday night and were able to get checked-in before nightfall.
We quickly realized this yurt (again, the ONLY one at Red Top Mtn SP) was a bit smaller than the other Yurts of Georgia State Parks. Fortunately, plenty of room for just the two of us.
This SP is a godsend as it is a massive dose of mother nature and it sits less than an hour from Atlanta. The whole park is a big peninsula that is surrounded by Allatoona Lake (which itself is part of The Etowah River). The view from our deck was awesome!
We wandered down to the waterfront and got another great view as the evening was winding down.
Those rocks from earlier looked pretty cool heading back up to the yurt, too.
We made a campfire, roasted hot dogs and melted marshmallows to make s'mores before winding it down for the evening. On Saturday, Gretchen suggested we rent a boat (OK... she was suggesting it all week). My cheap-skate mindset was getting the best of me until she reminded me how much I spend on my Canoes & Kayaks and then we headed over to Park Marina (they are located in the SP) where we rented an 18' Bayliner for half of the day. 
I'm so glad she was persistent on this as the area all around the SP is completely free of houses and there was only a few other boats out on the lake with us which offered us some awesome views.
We found a secluded cover where we anchored and went swimming for a long while. As I mentioned at the top of this post, this whole trip is preparing us for the times ahead. Yep, we're staring down the whole "empty nest" path and while I'd do ANYTHING for my kids, I'm also excited for Gretchen and I to start focusing heavily on ourselves, too. Life is great my friends!!
Before our time ran out, we drove under the bridge that we drove in on and then went down to the cove where our yurt sits above.
What's that? You don't see our yurt in the picture above? Don't worry, we couldn't see it either, but I promise it is up there!
The final thing to check out on the lake was the Allatoona Dam which (just on the other side of the picture below) was where my Two Brothers Knocking Out Two Sections of the Etowah River kayaking trip departed from on the previous weekend.
Speaking of Canoes & Kayaks, I bought a copy of Canoeing & Kayaking Georgia when we had to go back to the check-in station after we realized we left the campground gate code back in the yurt. I noodled over the book for a bit while relaxing back at our campsite and found a number of trips that looked like a lot of fun.
We finished up our last night preparing hearty foil pouches and christening our new dutch oven with the obligatory peach cobbler. DELICIOUS!!
All in all, we had a great trip and I'm so glad we ducked out, even if not too far, of town for some time together connecting on a personal level and enjoying the beauty of nature. I'm so fired up, I'm going to go book reservations at the last two of the Yurts of Georgia State Parks that I have not visited!!
It finally happened!! – Eric and I got out on the river together after he flew out when he had a few days break in his flying schedule. We decided we would knock out the Indian Mounds and Euharlee sections of The Etowah River for a great long trek that stretched 18 miles long.
We started just downriver of Allatoona Dam and we could not drive up the base of it on the road due to security barriers. We talked about paddling upriver the extra mile (each way!), but sitting at mile 0 of the 18 mile trip we (ok... I) decided to skip it and this is all we could see looking back towards the dam.
We started off with very high spirits and I quickly felt like we were temping fate and nature threw us a BUNCH of vultures in the first mile or two. It was really creepy with 20+ of the big birds watching us.
We got our mind off these scavengers after we went through the best built pre Civil War bridge pilings I've yet seen on all of my paddling journeys.
I also snapped off a couple of photos of a cool red barn.
Three miles into the journey is a BIG HAZARD and I don't think all of the river guides, articles and blog posts I read when preparing for this journey call it out clearly enough. Let me say this... WHEN YOU SEE THE RUSTY BUILDING ON RIVER RIGHT... YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THE WATER ON RIVER LEFT – ASAP!!
I'm betting you can see the drop off pretty clearly in the picture above from the portage spot, but Thompson Weinman "low head" Dam can really get you into trouble if you roll over it. The best warning and plan for dealing with it that I have found are detailed here. In a nutshell, stay river left after the Hwy 293 bridge and watch for the small white utility shed once you can see the rusty buildings above on river right. Just past the white utility shed you see the portage path which is where I took the picture above. You are getting pretty close to the hazard, but the current should make it easy for multiple boats to portage.
The portage itself was a bit more complicated than I was imagining, so take your time and then catch your breath at the bottom of the dam before pushing off for the rest of the trip.
We eventually strolled past the Etowah Indian Mounds (which Gretchen and I visited back in our Two More Covered Bridges trip) and saw a flock of geese.
We saw a bunch of turtles, too!!
We braved the forecast which called for showers all day and we enjoyed the cloudy skies and the cooler weather than came along with it. Unfortunately, that hindered my camera skills as shown in the old bridge photo below.
But then we had an unexpected 30 minutes of blue skies peeking through white puffy clouds.
We took advantage of this and stopped for lunch at Floyd's Landing which was officially closed for the season. We also agreed to switch boats for the remaining seven miles. No sooner was I celebrating the sunny skies that we got hammered for about 15 minutes of heavy rains. I tried to be a photographer of wildlife and man-made structures during this time (I'll let you be the judge to the outcome of this effort).
Once the rains ended, we neared the end of our journey. We did great on timing and tempo. Despite the lengthy time it took to portage the dam and the lunch break, we finished up this 18 mile journey in six hours. I could not have asked for a better trip to introduce my brother to kayaking. I even think I've got him hooked!
Wow, it has been two whole years since Tony and I were on the river with the last trip being A2A - Trip 1; 2 Kayaks, 18 Miles, 1 Lost Camera, and Too Many Hours (FINALLY Out of Atlanta) where I seriously had a solid scare (I need to try that bit again – this time with my boat pointing down river!). I was thrilled that with with my second Malibu Kayaks boat (its debut voyage was The Start of the Oostanaula River) I was able to talk Tony back out on the river where he belongs.
For this trip, I introduced him to The Etowah River where I have recently run a few of its sections. Roger joined us as well. As the Kayaking & Canoeing Google Map shows, we ran the Hardin Bridge section, but that was a game-day decision we made when we found out the put-in launch's park was closed for the season on the slightly shorter Euharlee seven mile run. We made good time once we finally got on the river completing this nine mile section in just under three hours.
As the prior picture shows, this is another secluded river section for those like me who are eager to escape all the hustle & bustle of Atlanta and just paddle down the river taking in the beauty all around. I was glad to find some turtles on this section which just seemed to be absent from some of the earlier sections of the river.
We were also blessed with a beautiful blue heron/egret that kept flying downriver a few hundred yards as we approached it.
We saw a cool old pair of pilings that predate the Civil War and was a key crossing point for trips during that conflict. Yes, like so many things around Atlanta, this old wooden bridge was burned during the Civil War. The pilings were eventually re-purposed to support an iron truss bridge which stayed open until 2008.
This section is home to six fish weirs as well as an area called Rock Garden where the river widens and becomes home to tons of barely submersed rocks that cause you to pick your path carefully. Some good shoals followed to speed things up.
This trip was a fun and relatively easy section and I was so glad Tony could get back out on the water. When shuttling back to the starting point to get everyone back in their cars we took a 10 minute diversion to check out the Euharlee Creek Covered Bridge that Gretchen and I visited back in Two More Covered Bridges.
Roger was a good sport (it took a couple of tries to get him to behave) and took a picture for his family. Tony... well... Tony was being Tony. 
While we were on the way to see A Couple of Covered Bridges South of Atlanta, Gretchen and I realized we were about to drive through The Walking Dead territory and with some side-of-the-road googling (I do not condone searching on your smart phone while driving) we found The Walking Dead Filming Locations Google Map. This led us to take a quick diversion through Senoia where quite a bit of The Walking Dead (TWD) is filmed. The downtown area is the set for Woodbury where The Governor ruled.
Just before jumping out of the car to take this picture, Gretchen said, "look... it is Rick!" and when I jumped out of the car I quickly realized it is a Rick lookalike running one of The Touring Dead outings. I can't tell you how fast our emotions ran from excitement to sheer amusement! I'm still chuckling when I think about it. Here are few photos from The Walking Dead of the reworked Woodbury.
And while it was far away on the TWD timeline and theoretically in distance, the site for the fictional town of Alexandria is just a couple of block over where they still have the zombie-proof fencing up.
Here are some pictures from the show to compare/contrast with.
Being such a Walking Dead fan and with the proximity of all of these sets, I'm sure we'll make a future outing of seeing as many of them as we can. That said, I doubt it will be as extensive as Edible Tapestry's Self-Guided TWD Filming Locations Tour which is a great read and full of fun photos.
Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge
Gretchen and I decided to go hunting for a couple more Covered Bridges; this time due south of Atlanta. First up was Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge as described and seen below.
The bridge appears to be in great shape from below.
It even is taking traffic and rated for 3 tons, but as we walked across it we were not feeling very confident about the whole thing with some spots that were down right scary. The most troublesome section was the "approach" (non-covered) section that rattled like crazy when we watched a car go over it. We walk down it and it really was scary!
Auchumpkee Creek Covered Bridge
About 30 minutes away was our next step where we ran into the same covered bridge chasers as at the last one! This time at the Auchumpkee Creek Covered Bridge which has this info sign.
What a beauty it is.
It is well constructed and in great shape.
They aren't allowing car traffic on the bridge, but you can walk through it and take photos of your loved ones!!
Last photo of the day – and this post!
