Gunby Creek

The weather around here has been wild this past week.

Single digit temperatures Monday night. Rain every day since. Tornado sirens this morning. Now it's 60 degrees, for some reason.

Wild.

On top of that, I've been getting over a cold that I thought I had kicked this past Monday. But no, it was one of those colds that lingers on and makes your joints hurt and makes you get bad sleep and makes it hard to think the next day. For a week.

No good.

I felt all right today though, and with the nice weather and all, figured I ought to get out and get some sun. I couldn't imagine any mountain bike trail being open. The roads were still wet and I didn't feel much like taking a rolling shower. So... I guess I'm walking... In retrospect, that might not have even been all that good of an idea, but at the time, it seemed like one.

Gunby Creek.

I think that's the name, at least. It's in the Cochrans Shoals area. Big surprise there. I'm all over the place out there these days.

The creek is really a set of creeks that flow into this big marshy area, hemmed in by beaver dams, that eventually dumps into the Chattahoochee. I've seen the evidence, but I have yet to see an actual beaver. Some day though... Some day.

From the river, there's this boardwalk you have to cross to get onto the trail.

It's marshy all around, but the main flow appears to go right under the boardwalk itself. It's funny, there's this loud rushing water sound but it's not immediately obvious where it's coming from, and if you look around, everything looks really still. It was a little confusing at first.

Once I got into the trails, I kind-of wished I'd stayed home. The trail down along the creek was really wet and muddy. There was no hope of keeping my feet dry. They even sunk down into the mud in the low spots. The creek was high, and in a few places, threatened to spill out into the trail. In one place, the creek was actually higher than a low spot in the trail and only a fortuitously placed log kept the two apart.

Up off of the creek, things were a lot better though. In fact, most of the trails in the area were ok, but the ones down by the creek were a mess and a half.

The last time I was out there I'd worked myself over trying to get my jogging legs back. This time I warmed up a bit first, took it kind of easy and eased into it. Things went a lot better. I found it hard to jog more than a quarter mile at a time, but I never really suffered. One step at a time, I guess.

The furthest reaches of the trail system led to streets and buildings. The near end followed the creek and its various branches.

I'd planned on spending 2 or 3 hours out there but about an hour into it, I got a call from my buddy Ben who'd apparently texted me earlier but never got a response. Yes, even though it's 2014, I don't have texting on my phone. Ridiculous, I know, but hey, what are you going to do? I needed to get back so we could watch the Saints/Seahawks game, so I cut my explorations a little short, leaving a few trails to the north unexplored.

That's cool though, more for next time.

On the way out my shoes were so covered in mud that I was leaving prints on the boardwalk. When I got to the exercise trail I stopped and kicked my feet around in a puddle until they were clean. This older couple was taking great pains to go around the puddle and looked at me like I was crazy. I guess it did look a little crazy.

I think I hit every stop light on the way home, and on the way up to Kennesaw to meet Ben. Even more frustrating than that though, the Seahawks won and the Saints are out of the playoffs. Damn, DAMN!

Next year!