Not knowing how crippled I'd be after Jackrabbit, I didn't make any specific plans for this Sunday. It turned out all right though. I slept in till noon, but other than that, everything was fine. My almost-teenage daughter even slept in later than me, so hah!
We wanted to do something but none of us felt like being in the woods, or for that matter, the mountains. We ended up in Roswell, on the Roswell Riverside Trail. It was a dead flat, 8 mile out-and-back. Good enough.
The Iz:
The Gerch:
We ride!
The trail ran through a bunch of parks and one of them had a little pier that led out into the river. The Chattahoochee looks a lot different in Roswell than up by my end of the world.
After going under some really tall bridge the trail became gravel and went for another mile or two before dead ending anonymously.
There was a side loop out that way too but we decided to come back for it another day.
The return trip went by quickly and when we got back, we played in the park for a while. There was a boat ramp and we walked around down by the river.
Sophie swung on the swings.
A lady rode up with low tires on her bike and I pumped them up for her.
That was about it for the Riverside Trail. We headed back toward the house.
In downtown Roswell I remembered wanting to check out "The Old Mill" and we had plenty of time so we stopped by. The mill itself dates back to the late 1800's. The main building has been turned into shops but the machine shop still stands as it originally did, only boarded up.
They'd also build a covered bridge across the creek (Big Creek, AKA Vickery Creek), but that was done in 2004.
There were apparently several dams across the creek at different times too, one on a shoal right below the bridge.
There are a bunch of old buildings and trails and all kinds of stuff there. We'll have to go back and check it all out some day. One more destination for the list.
We ate at Diesel on the way home. I'd seen it a few times before and it looked cool. The food was OK. Not outstanding and more expensive than good, but it got the job done. There was a guy playing acoustic guitar too and he played a bunch of good songs, so we dug that.
I did learn something, or rather had an epiphany about some really obscure information that no one will care about except me but I'm going to write it down anyway. There's this gap in the mountains called Hightower Gap and a creek that flows down from it called Hightower Creek. I read somewhere that Hightower is believed to be a mispronunciation of the Cherokee word Itowa meaning town though there is no evidence that there was ever a town up there. I assumed that the gap got that name because from it you could see various towns in the Piedmont. Back in the day, the closest was Two Run and further off, Dahlonega and you can still see all kinds of towns from up there, especially at night in the winter when the lights stand out and there are no leaves on the trees. Today I read several interpretive signs along the Riverside Trail describing the Cherokee Nation and the fate of the Cherokee people. One mentions that the "Etowah Trail (Hightower Trail)" formed the border of the Nation... Wait! Hold up! The creek that originates below Hightower Gap (Hightower Creek) becomes the Etowah River right above Camp Merrill. Is Etowah really pronounced "Itowa"? Should Hightower Gap and Hightower Creek really be Etowah Gap and Etowah Creek? That would really make sense but I've never read anything like that anywhere, and I've looked harder than you might think for info about that area. Am I the only one who's figured this out or is it really common knowledge and I'm just really late to the party? Well, whatever the case, that was my epiphany today. You learn something new every day, and it was weird that I ran into this little tid bit, probably 100 miles away from the gap and creek in question. Crazy.
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