Lake Acworth

During the days leading up to the 4th of July, my brother, his girl, and I coordinated to get together for some stand-up-paddling. The original plan was to meet up with a bunch of folks on the Chattahoochee, for a little party that typically goes down every year. They usually meet in Roswell, paddle up to this particular rock, hang out for a few hours, grill, and then float back down. I did it with them last year, and it was a blast. This year, though, there had been a bad e-coli warning on the river, and not just the typical it-rained-recently kind of warning. This was an actual sewage leak or something. To deal with it, they released a bunch of water from the dam, so the river was super high, and the current was super strong. The sand bar that we stopped at halfway up was likely to be under water, and the party rock might not even be exposed.

None of this sounded good to any of us, so we decided to paddle around Lake Acworth by ourselves, instead.

I don't remember the exact chain of events, but we ended up leaving late in the day, and driving up to the lake, only to find that the roads were closed to the main parks, somehow related to fireworks. We scrambled to figure out where else we could go, and eventually decided to try our luck on Lake Allatoona, somewhere off of Hwy 20. As luck would have it though, there was an area open, on Lake Acworth, just north of where we wanted to put in. They had one open spot though, so my brother could drive in, but I couldn't. Ha! Just my luck. No matter though, I'd seen a side road a few blocks back, where it looked like people parked sometimes anyway. I just spun back, parked there, threw my cooler over my shoulder, and walked over.

The timing was almost perfect. I ran to the bathroom to get changed, and just as I got back, the boards were fully inflated.

Woo!

It was a little tricky to get into the water. The boat ramp and the dock were jammed with folks launching jet skis and small boats. We ended up putting in directly off of some nearby rocks, but it worked out fine.

Having only ever paddled once, on a river, with no motorized boats on it, the lake seemed like a challenge. The water was generally rougher, and there was a wake coming from some direction, most of the time. It turned out that it wasn't a big deal though. The board was really stable, even in the rough water.

Lake Acworth is really just a spur off of Lake Allatoona, and there's a channel where boats go in and out between the two lakes. We made our way counter-clockwise along the shore, crossed that channel, and paddled over into some really calm water near a couple of campgrounds and cabins. It was a no-wake zone, and even though boats came and went, the water was calm for most of the time that we were back in there.

We found a spot, pulled the boards together, hung out talking and listening to music, drifted around, found another spot, and repeated until we eventually got tired of it.

At a point, we continued further around the lake. We could see a beach on the other side, which looked like the park that we had originally wanted to put in at. There were buoys marking the channel, and John and I wanted to paddle around to a narrow spot, shoot across, and paddle over to the beach. This did not seem like a good idea to Kseniya, and she vetoed the plan. This, honestly might have been the right call, I'm not sure. It didn't seem any more dangerous crossing the lake than crossing that channel we'd crossed earlier, but I really didn't have enough experience to be sure.

Instead, we more-or-less went back the way we came, though we did cross a pretty big chunk of open water, rather than following the shore like we had on the way out. John was looking back at one point, though, didn't notice a wake coming at him, and got knocked off the board. He held on to his paddle though, and, miraculously, grabbed his drink as he was falling, kept it from tipping over, and then managed to get back on the board with no problem.

Good save!

We did more of that paddle around, find a chill spot, and relax thing on the way back. Eventually the sky started getting a little dark though, like weather was thinking about moving in, and that put an end to pretty much everyone's day that was out on the lake, ours included.

Done!

I can't say that I have a passion for SUP, but it is a lot of fun, I guess in the same way that destination hiking is. John always says that it's not exactly a performance sport, but it does require a level of fitness and skill to be fun, and if you have that, then it's fun. That about sums it up. It's also just great to be out on the water. I don't do that much, and it's a whole novel experience. I definitely understand the appeal.

On the way back, we stopped Willys on Barrett Parkway, feasted on burritos and such...

...and then got caught in the rain that had chased us off of the lake. Fortuantely the awning was deep enough to keep us dry, and the rain was light and short.

That night I watched fireworks in every direction, just from my house. It's cool that decent mortars are cheap enough for the average family to fire off these days. Of course, where I live, the most popular thing is semi-automatic gunfire. So, in my neighborhood, you get to enjoy both.