Moore's Bridge Park

In addition to the Eastern Divide Route, Brett Davidson's been hard at work getting all kinds of new local trailsystems going, including Southside Park, Brown's Farm, and most recently, Moore's Bridge. Hmm... Moore's Bridge. I remember hearing about it some time ago, somewhere out by Macintosh. I noticed him riding it on Strava, and it piqued my interest again. He mentioned that the second loop ought to be finished by this past weekend, so this past weekend I headed down there.

It was a little tricky to find it. It shouldn't have been, but Siri didn't know where it was, and the closest she could get me to it was Black Dirt Road, which it was off of. I had a harder time finding it on Black Dirt Road than I should have though. I didn't know if the park road was a real road or just some old dirt road, and looking at the map, I kept thinking I must have passed it. I even backtracked once. This was all silly, in retrospect. It turned out that I had been on the right track, and it was really, really well marked.

I parked in the lot by the bathrooms...

...got changed, and spun down the main road to the river.

There was a put-in on the Chattahoochee River down there.

The trail lead back uphill from the far corner of the lot.

Pretty awesome trail.

Fast and fun. Not terribly steep, but it was definitely real mountain biking. I spun a lap, counter-clockwise, but I wondered if I hadn't gone the non-traditional direction after spinning it. I'll have to try the other way sometime.

Down by the river there was also a "picnic area" which was kind of an eroded dirt road off of the main road with a slab at the end of it. The slab looked like it might have once had a pavillion over it, but it had been cut down some time ago. In the vicinity though, across a little creek, some trails led west.

I could see the recently cut trail, but there were a bunch of older trails too, and they were intriguing, so I explored them. It was quite the spiderweb, but in the end, I discerned an old dirt road leading down toward the river from Black Dirt Road. Off that road, there was what looked like an old park office or maybe a game check station.

Or, maybe not. It looked like it, but I didn't go inside.

A ways down toward the river, there were some ruins. A collapsed chimney.

Some footings.

And second collapsed chimney.

There, the main road ends, and another road leads left and right, following ridges down to the river. It took forever to explore them, but in between the main roads, there were all kinds of trails. Plenty of trails. Mainly horse trails from the hoof prints, but I saw some footprints too. I got the impression that there were more trails to the west as well, but I didn't have the kind of time I'd need to explore everything. Yet another reason to return though.

Eventually, I tired of decoding the spiderweb and felt like riding the new loop. There was a mylar baloon on the way back to it.

I actually hadn't seen one in a while.

The trail looks like it'll be a great trail, but it really was just built the day before, or at most the day before that, and it was bumpity, bumpity, bumpity.

It was getting late, and I needed to get going, so I didn't spin a second loop. On the way out, I ran across this fairy home.

Ironically, me and Kathryn and Mac had just been talking about fairies and fairy homes earlier that day at lunch.

Back at the lot, some guy drove up and dropped another guy off. Older guy, walked with a limp and a hunch. He just milled around the entire time I was changing and loading up. It was getting dark, and a little cold, but he seemed to be there intentionally, and seemed to know what he was doing, so I let him be. On the way out, as I was pulling onto the road, another car skidded to a stop and pulled into the park. I imagine they were picking up that guy. I thought it was funny that they almost missed the park entrance. Apparently I wasn't the only one having trouble finding it.

Also, I didn't notice while I was riding, but I'd apparently cut my arm on something.

Maybe the fairies did it. It bled and bled, coarse, thick blood. Kind of gross, actually.

Later, I forgot about it, and it grossed out the waiter at dinner.

Heh.