Big Cedar and Cedar Hill

My Dad and I have been working all week and only been able to get together afterwards, but this morning we had all day and we were up bright and early with bigger plans than usual.

He'd been telling me about this trail called Big Cedar that we've just got to ride. Poking around on the DORBA web site, I discovered that it was right next door to Cedar Hill State Park. The first time I came to Dallas with a bike, I rode at Cedar Hill. I've only been back once, and that was probably ten years ago. Given their proximity, and that we had all day, it didn't seem reasonable to ride one and not the other. So that was our plan.

We got to Big Cedar about 10:30.



It turns out it's on a huge piece of land owned by a church. You actually drive through the church lot to get to the trailhead.

It wasn't yet a million degrees out, and there were a bunch of cars in the lot.



Everyone was coming in off the trail and heading out though, so maybe it was gonna be a hot one. Still, the novelty of the heat hadn't yet worn off, and thus the warning implied by the exodus had little effect on me. I was happy to be there and looking forward to riding something different.



Most of the trails in Dallas are relatively flat, really twisty and occasionally punctuated by drops or really short, steep climbs. Big Cedar isn't really like that. The soil and the foliage were familiar but the terrain was more like what I'm used to seeing in Georgia.

The trails basically run up, down and all around a limestone escarpment in one of the hilliest regions in the metro area. No opportunity to gain or lose elevation was wasted. There were occasionally drops and kickers, but there were also switchbacks, long runouts and much longer climbs.

My Dad popped a few spokes last weekend and he's been running a loaner front wheel and a tire he's not used to. He'd slipped once or twice at Rowlett the other day but saved it easily. Today, the terrain was less forgiving.



We thought he was unhurt, but later it turned out that he'd landed on a little stump and cut his hand through his glove. It wasn't bad enough to need stitches, but it was bad enough to check and see if it needed stitches. It was in a good place though. Gripping the bars held it closed and it didn't seem to bother him at all while he was riding.

Like all Dallas trails, Big Cedar alternated between twisting through the woods and meandering around in open fields.



In the midday sun, it was much hotter out in the open than it has been all week. It was hot in the woods too and with the terrain, we were working harder than we've had to. We took a couple of breaks.



There were some seriously difficult climbs and we pushed more than a few times.



But we made more than we pushed.



Oh man, that just looks HOT.

There are about 10 miles of trail out there, but it feels more like 20. We rode most of it. There were some bypass trails that we skipped and two downhill runs.

We even hit a brand new trail that was just opened the day before which definitely needs to be ridden in. There was an extremely sketchy spine running across a set of limestone boulders, half natural, half constructed, that could use some adjustment too. It's somewhat precarious, you have to commit without being able to see all of what you're committing to and there's no good direction to bail in. My Dad sketched going into it, got in the wrong position, couldn't get his feet back on right and generally just made it through on instinct and momentum. It was scary, but it turned out ok.

When we got back, the lot was empty. We were the only ones foolish enough to be out in the heat.



It had been about 102 when we started, and it was then 106.

But we were just getting started.

Cedar Hill was just up the road.



There were two cars in the Cedar Hill lot. One was owned by a guy who was coming back in from his ride as we drove up. We parked next to the other. Not 3 minutes later, two young teenage girls came jogging off the trail, jumped into the bed, grabbed big chunks of ice and took off jogging back down the trail. Then, a few minutes later they appeared again, doing the same thing. Then, again a few minutes after that, this time with a third girl.

We talked to them for a minute. It turned out that they were with a group of hikers, including their parents who had no water. One of their moms was sitting down on the trail. My dad had brought a cooler with like 5 full Powerade and Simply Orange bottles and we'd filled it with ice on the way out. He'd done this the previous couple of days too. It seemed like massive overkill to me and though it had been nice to have the cool water at the end of the ride, I certainly wouldn't have gone to that trouble if I were out by myself. Then and there though, however massive, his overkill turned out to have been a really good idea. We gave the girls two bottles, full of ice-cold, filtered water and a bag of Cherry Blossom Honey Stingers. Ten minutes later their entire crew walked out. The bottles were empty and they'd eaten all but one of the gels. They didn't appear to have brought any water with them at all and they'd been out on a 5 mile loop. I've seen that more times than I can count. I even did it once or twice myself, way back. It just doesn't seem that far until you get into it and it's easy to get within a mile of the end, dehydrated and exhausted, and take as long to get out from there as it took you to get to that point.

I imagine that water must have tasted good. Like "God's own mercy."

Unfortunately, as it turned out, we'd given them the bottles that I'd filled from my dad's fridge, which has a filter. With the drought they're experiencing, the tap water in Dallas these days tastes dirty and moldy and though it's apparently safe to drink, it's not what you'd choose to drink if you had a choice. I'd filled my bottles with fridge water that morning, but they were empty and all we had left in the cooler were bottles I'd filled from the tap earlier that week before I discovered the fridge. Yay. Mold-water.

Whatever, it was getting hot and we had some riding to get done.

What I remembered of Cedar Hill was that it was more of the same meander through the prairies then twist through the woods action that Dallas is famous for, that there is more gradual climbing and descending than the other local trails and that it's almost completely devoid of drop or kicks.

All that turned out to be pretty close.

In the woods, it was twisty, but not as twisty as I remember. I remembered having a hard time fitting between the trees last time, but since then the corridor had really been opened up.

There were endless switchback too. I remembered some climbing from ten years ago, made technical by erosion and exposed roots. Now it's all switchbacks. Endless, endless switchbacks. If you're in the woods, you're riding switchbacks.

Out in the prairies it was less twisty, but only marginally so.



There were a couple of distinct landmarks that I never saw too. I remember a creek crossing with a chain-link fence on the ground to give you traction coming out the other side, and a long run through the prairie where you come around a corner and Bam! there's a great view of a huge field with rolling hills heading off into the distance as far as you can see. In spring, the field is covered in wildflowers.

I never saw either of those today. Looking at a topo map later, I think I see where the trail's been rerouted around the big field-view, but I've got no idea about the creek. Maybe there's a bridge across it now.

There was a nice view of one of the inlets on Joe Pool Lake.



Later, we ran along the edge of it for a mile or so too.

The heat started getting to me about halfway around. It had definitely been getting warmer all day.

The one thing that's really struck me all week is that when it's warmer than body temperature outside, your frame is warm when you lean your knee against it. That's just weird.

The water felt like hot tea in my mouth. Hot, moldy tea.

To make matters worse, my dad appeared to really be recovering right about then. Now and then it even seemed like he was attacking me. I was always able to respond, but I don't usually have to dig to keep up with him. I was digging today. When we got back I was glad to be done.

I think the novelty of the heat has finally worn off.

It was fun riding Cedar Hill but it just wasn't what I'd remembered it being. It was good riding, but after a while it was just anonymous singletrack. It always seemed like we were climbing too. There were plenty of long climbs, but no long runouts or downhills of any significance. I know it's geographically impossible, but I swear that we climbed from the time we left the lot to the time we got back.

Big Cedar was tough and really fun. Cedar Hill was a little anticlimactic. Either way though, until the heat started getting to me it just felt really great to be out in some unfamiliar woods, spending time with my Dad. This might be the last ride I'm able to get in on this trip. If it turns out to be, it wasn't a bad way to end it.

Erwin Park

I met my dad after work yesterday for a little spin around Erwin Park. It was hot enough to melt crayons on the sidewalk, but still a few degrees cooler than yesterday.



It was also about an hour later and the sun wasn't shining on us so directly either, so it felt a lot nicer outside.

It's a bit further to Erwin Park than Rowlett. We got there about 7:30.



There were a bunch of high school kids grilling out and throwing around frisbees and footballs. It sounds crazy, but at very first, having been listening to them but not looking at them, I thought they were a group of special needs kids. Two of them kept repeating the same things over and over and laughing oddly. It turned out that they were just doing it to mess with each other. I was surprised how good natured they were. When I was going to a Texas high school, a big group of kids like that would have been drinking and arguing, possibly looking for a fight.

We hit the singletrack as quickly as possible.



Erwin Park, like a lot of land around these parts is a series of old pastures segregated by streams. Each stream is bordered by dense bits of woods. I actually recognized some trees today. Sort-of. A couple of different oaks. Not really sure what kind. Out in the pastures there were random trees but here and there, but mainly little stands of cedar have been taking over.

The trails meander lazily around a field, dive into a little patch of woods, twist around insanely, then burst back out into another field, over and over.

I crashed almost immediately. In the first little bit of woods, there was this great little twisty downhill and at the last second, hidden from view, I had to squeeze between two trees with barely half an inch on either side. Maybe if I'd known it was there or even if I could have seen it, I'd have been able to thread that needle. Instead, I pingponged around a few times before finally ditching the bike. My right shoulder took the worst hit. It felt ok at the time, but it's more swollen now than I'd like. I've got full mobility, but we'll see.

I was a little gunshy after that, but the rest of the trail didn't give us much trouble.



The last time I'd ridden there must have been 10 years ago and it was slightly damp outside. The soil in Dallas turns to cookie dough if it gets a drop of moisture. On that day, the little stream crossings near the end caked mud up on our tires do badly that they jammed up against the frame and fork and we had to walk the last mile and a half.

There was no chance of that yesterday though. It was bone dry and we were able to ride the little roller coaster at the end with no problems.

Or, at least almost no problems. It was getting late and dark.



We were worried that we'd have to walk out of the woods but we ended up having just barely enough light.

The high school kids were packing up when we got back to the car. It was definitely time to go.

We'd only gotten in one lap but it wasn't about getting in a ton of miles. It was about getting out of our backyards and having fun together, and that we definitely accomplished.

Rowlett Creek

The day before yesterday we discovered that school starts on the 11th. All summer, we'd been planning to go to Texas to visit my folks "sometime this August" but with this, that and the other going on, it was never really a good time to go. Our hand was fully forced though. We had to leave immediately or bail on the trip until Christmas. There was no other option. I had some fairly significant plans for the weekend, including an important work party up at Bull Mountain and some Fool's Gold-related activities, but we hadn't been over to visit in years, and I've only been able to see my Dad randomly for a day or two at a time since. It took all day and several phone calls and emails to decide, but in the end, we headed west.

As luck would have it, Dallas is experiencing near-record temperatures right now. According to the local paper, the only city in the world reporting higher temps is Baghdad.



It said 112 a few seconds earlier.

I'm sure I'd get tired of it if I lived here, like how snow gets old after a couple of days. The novelty hadn't worn off yet though, and yeah, it's hot, but it's really dry and it's not so hot that it feels like you can't stay out in it.

I was really looking forward to getting some miles in with my dad and the heat just made it that much more interesting.

I met him at the shop around 5 and we went for a ride at Rowlett Creek, which is hands-down his favorite trail in the world.



It was definitely hot. All exposed soil exhibited massive shrinkage.



I thought it was the cold that caused shrinkage.

Hiyo!

I'll be here all week.

Rowlett is great. It's relatively flat, very twisty and punctuated with short, steep, technical drops and climbs. You can really fly though, especially if you know the trail like my dad does.

We'd twist around in the woods for a while...



...then pop out into a field...



...then dive back into the woods. There's a section where you dive back and forth across a drainage ditch, another where you climb up and down onto an old rail bed, and another that appears to be composed entirely of waste concrete. Lots of variety.

I made a big mistake though. I'd filled my bottles at the house, then driven around with them in the bottle holders, on my bike, on my roof, in 112 degree heat, for several hours before we rode. It was like drinking soup. I actually worried that it would actually make me hotter, but it turned out OK. The irony is that my dad mentioned having done the same thing on the way over but it just didn't register in my mind.

The padre is generally fit enough that it's fun to ride with him, but over the past few months, he's lost like 20 pounds and he's really fast now, especially on his backyard trail. Stay fit everyone and you too can rip singletrack with your kid(s) for hours, in 112 degree heat and barely get tired, well into your 50's.

Oh! Also... I was telling my dad... I'm sure he doesn't notice because he rides there all the time, but the scenery was amazing. It's so different than anything in Georgia or North Carolina. There are these huge fields. The dirt is all grey and cracked from the heat and dryness. The squirrels are red. The trees are all scraggly and alien. There's grass growing on every inch of ground that isn't trail, even in the woods. There are acres of woods with some kind of grass that's tall and brown with wheat-like seed pods on it. In one section, we came around a corner and as far as you could see the ground was covered in crumpled up yellow-brown leaves, like it was fall already. Amazing!

There was actually one tree that I recognized - the Bois D'Arc. It grows these weird fruits that are the size of a grapefruit, green and as hard as a softball. We had to dodge a couple of them on the trail. I didn't recognize the fruit or the tree though until I got a good look at one in the parking lot. Literally, every other tree, no idea.

We saw one snake too. Again, no idea. Damn my ignorance! Before I ride again, I'm going to have to google-up "flora and fauna of Texas" or something.

On the way out, I gave myself a brain freeze on some Gatorade and then we met my brother Daniel and his girlfriend Jesiree for dinner at B.J.'s. Great ride, good food, great company. I hope we get to do it again a few times this trip.

George Pierce Park

During one of my earlier expeditions to the Suwanee area earlier this year, I ran across George Pierce Park, which I recognized from a GPS track that I got from my buddy Tim a while back. The GPS track was incomprehensible, but sometimes a little context can turn that around, so I kept meaning to get back there to ride around and check it out. Today I did just that.

I figured I'd ride out there on the road bike and if the trails ended up being too rough, I'd bail and ride up to Buford instead.



There turned out to be a fairly extensive system of paved trails throughout the park, kind of like Sims Lake, but more miles.

They mostly looked like this.



There were several loops with little connectors to parking lots or neighborhoods. It was confusing at first, but eventually I got the lay of the land.

There was a pond.



There were ducks in the pond.



I passed another guy on a bike who was out exploring too, and a dozen or so joggers, a few times each, which must have made them wonder what the heck I was up to.

There's a hill you have to climb to get out of the back of the park that's really long and steep. I ended up standing in the granny for about half of it.

I got slightly lost toward the back of the park and ended up on what turned out just to be a walkway to some ball fields. They were building a new field back there, or renovating an old one.



One section of trails was blocked off and marked closed due to new construction, so I didn't go that way, but then when I got to the back there was a different sign, saying "Trail closed ahead" and there was nothing blocking the trail. I figured "Ok, ahead of me somewhere, the trail will be closed" and continued.

The trail was mostly a boardwalk through some wetlands.



When I stopped to take that shot, a deer jumped up out of the weeds to the right of me. It was so big and loud that the idea of an alligator sprung to mind before I had a chance to turn and see what it really was. I'm glad it wasn't an alligator. Not that we have those up here anyway.

There were two overlooks that gave a good view of a marshy pond.





When I got to the second overlook, as soon as I stopped, dozens of turtles fell off of their respective logs into the water.

The trail ultimately led out to the Suwanee Creek Greenway. You could ride all the way out to the end of the bridge, but a plywood blockade prevented you from getting off and going the additional foot and a half to the Greenway itself.

I backtracked and took the only intersecting trail, which led directly to that first closure. Come on! What's up with blocking the trail at one end but not the other? If you want people to actually stay off, you have to block all of the entrances or at least put up unambiguous signage. I guess by "Trail closed ahead" they meant that the trail was closed ahead of that exact point. Perhaps just "Trail closed" would have been a better choice of words. Ugh.

I didn't realize how long I'd spent rolling around in the park, and it was getting late. When I first left the house, I'd ridden over to Reality to get a new back tire, then ridden out to Suwanee, then explored all over the park. I'd meant to stay out for about two hours, but it was already pushing 2:45 and I still needed to get back.

Traffic was backed up on Suwanee Dam Road and I ended up riding past hundreds of cars. It was a bit of a grind from the river to the house, but fortunately the traffic wasn't bad at all through there.

All right. Not a bad ride. I think I'll lay off tomorrow and maybe try to go fishing again or something.

Dry Creek

Yeah, I rode Dry Creek again Sunday, what about it?

The Dry Creek trails are really, really nice. So nice, in fact that despite being 2 hours from my house and having ridden there twice in recent memory, the frere and I met up for some additional Dry Creekage yesterday morning.

On the way out, I discovered an error in my memory of things too. Apparently the way to spell the name of the community out there and the roads leading to and from it is "Armuchee", not "Amurchee" or "Armurchee." I had struggled with that way back and actually gone out and verified the spelling by looking at a street sign, but apparently I was mistaken because I'd come away with "Amurchee" and called it that ever since. Well, I got it now.

There was one other car in the lot and some folks pulled up in a horse trailer right after we got there.

I always forget that it costs money to park there, so I had to dig around in my change pile. Luckily, my change pile runs deep and there was like 8 or 9 dollars in silver money floating around in there. I only needed $5.

$5:



The frere was wearing his West Side Bike League kit. Big-up yourself West Side.



Literally, the second I took that picture, he said "Don't do that." Ha! I did it.

Enough screwing around though.



I've finally kind of figured out a loop, or I guess actually a double-loop around the place, so we rode that. The left hand loop was Connector -> Loblolly (north) -> Pinhoti -> Turkey -> Dry Creek -> Mount Joy and then a little backtracking on Dry Creek, Loblolly and the Connector back to the lot.

John declared the trails to be "marbley" which is probably a good description. The soil up there, on that side at least is decomposed limestone, and the trail is strewn with little chunks of it. Sometimes it feels like riding on marbles. The little chunks are squared-off, but occasionally they roll out from under you.

Marbles or not, you can really fly on those trails, even uphill. They roll and flow and there are long lines of sight.

Dry Creek and Mount Joy were anything but joyous though. The underbrush has really grown up in the past few weeks and thorn bushes have come in everywhere. There was no hope of dogding them and we got shredded. They were some kind of special, burning thorns too, where you get scratched and then it burns like you got stung or something. My bro managed to pick up a bit of locust too, which stabbed through his glove when he tried to pull it off. Yay, thorns.

By mid-ride, it was in the high 90's so we stopped where the road crosses the creek to cool off and have a bite to eat. As usual, little schools of fish were hanging out over the road. Some folks were camping nearby. I turned over some rocks to see if there were any of the same bugs that the girls had gotten covered with yesterday - there were.

But the break didn't last long and we spun around the right hand loop: Wheat -> Armuchee -> Saddlehorn -> Armuchee again -> Stirrup -> Loblolly -> Connector. We had meant to take Bridle back up, but I never saw it. I also made a navigation error in there somehwere, thinking Stirrup was Bridle and that it had been mismarked. If I'd looked carefully enough, I'd have realized we crossed the creek already though. Woohoo! Don't trust me to get you anywhere.

We rode for just under three hours but neither of us were up for much more.

Time for a swim.

We'd only passed two riders on horseback all day, but on the way down the creek, we passed a train of maybe ten or more. They were headed back to the lot. I recognized the folks at the back. They'd showed up right after we did and I'd talked to them for a while before we left.

It's such a shock getting into the water. It almost hurts even, but then you just don't want to get out. John was joking about getting covered in bugs again, and I must admit that the thought had crossed my mind, but there were no bugs and I was very happy about that.

If getting into the water was physically painful, getting back out was emotionally painful. "Man, it's gonna be hot..."



The real pain of the day was in my sit bones, or more precisely, the skin that gets pressed between my sit bones and the seat. Garneau bibs are great on the road where you're sitting still most of the time, but the chamois is almost like terrycloth and on the mountain bike, where you get bounced around left and right all day, it might as well be sandpaper. No amount of Chamois Butt'r makes any difference. It hurt to sit in the car on the way home. It hurts now even, a day later. I've got to find a solution to that.

We grabbed some lunch at Chili's in Rome and split up from there.

When I got home, we milled around the house for a few hours and grabbed some dinner at Outback. I was so full from lunch that I just had soup.

With hours of daylight left and the weather finally cooling off, we tried to catch a few fish at the lake. My family caught dozens of tiny fish.



I'd been trying to catch something bigger. I got one nibble, and then I ended up having to drive Sophie to the bathroom. When I got back, I started seeing fish hit the surface all around and I even saw a small bass hovering over the rocks near the shore. It was cooling off, the fish were starting to get active, it was looking good, and then Sophie had to go to the bathroom again. Ok, never mind, time to go home.

The fishing sucked, but the ride was good. I should be able to do some more good riding with my brother again next weekend. It's been a while since we've gotten together regularly, so I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Arabia Mountain Trail

Yesterday morning, I woke up and asked the girls what they wanted to do today. "Ride bikes" was Isabel's idea. Sophie agreed. Isabel's friend Madison, who'd spent the night, was all about it too.

Ok. We're riding bikes. But where? The Greenway is great, but we took Maddie there last time. We rode the Silver Comet last weekend. Internet to the rescue.

It turned out there was a system in Lithonia with about 15 miles of trail and various points of interest along the way. Lithonia? I only vaguely even knew that name. Actually, I was confusing it with Livonia, Louisiana where Kathryn has some relatives. Lithonia, Georgia? Somewhere out by Stone Mountain? Yeah, kind of. Ok, whatever.

Click. Print. Pack. Go.

We looked for a trailhead in Lithonia proper, but there was none to be found. Instead, we ended up at Stonecrest Mall where the locals were unsure how to interact with us. We got a lot of confused looks and it was tricky crossing the street. No one meant us any harm, we were just strangely foreign.

It probably didn't help how I was dressed. If you think the lycra looks weird, replace the bib and jersey with the loose-fitting hiking equivalent, but leave the helmet, gloves and shoes the same and add an overstuffed camelback. It's a new level of weird - the uncanny divide; not quite one, not quite the other, too much of both, not enough of either.

We did manage to get on the trail though.

Our mission was clear.

Our team was strong.



It was go time.

The Arabia Mountain trail had many flavors.

Up toward Livonia it pretty much just followed the road and there was an underpass.



It ended anonymously in some neighborhood on that end.

On the way back we passed the mall again.



Georgia isn't known for being Big Sky Country, but man look at that!

Heading south, we passed through pastures...



woods...



boardwalks...



exposed granite...



and covered bridges.



Diversity is the only constant on the Arabia Mountain Trail.

The terrain was challenging to say the least. There were endless rollers, long, steep climbs that required switchbacks and long gradual climbs that just ate you up slowly.

I was stunned how many climbs Sophie made. She really impressed me. She just crushed the pedals and didn't quit. It helped that she finally figured out how to climb standing.



Iz looked comfortable on most of the climbs, but even she had to grind out a few of them. I'm buying Sophie a gear bike as soon as humanly possible.

So, we were just riding along and we rode up on this nature center...



I should have done more than 1 minute's worth of research before heading out there. The trail runs through a state park with 15 miles of hiking trails across a couple of actual mountains composed entirely of exposed granite, like miniature versions of Stone Mountain except that these have been turned into more of a preserve than an park.

We learned all of this at the nature center. 15 miles of trails on weird terrain? Yeah, we're going back, but maybe when it's a little cooler.

Speaking of which, we had the opportunity, so we drank and drank, then topped off our water bottles. If it wasn't 100 degrees, it was close.

The guy at the nature center told us about a "cascade" up the trail a bit and recommended we check it out. It turned out to be in a direction we'd planned on going anyway, so we added it to our list and got moving again.

Almost immediately though, we ran across a side trail that wasn't on the map.

Not one to leave a side trail unexplored, I insisted that we check it out.

It turned out to be one long boardwalk for what seemed like half a mile or more, and at the end, a Wildlife Center.



They had a bunch of rescued native animals there that they're caring for, like owls and hawks and an impressively docile and sleepy opossum.



He was really sweet and kicked his leg like a dog when the lady scratched him in the right spot. We weren't allowed to scratch him though. Like all the animals there, he was recovering from some kind of trauma; in his case, a head injury. It had left him prone to random outbursts in which he had been known to bite.

There are tours there at 1 and 3, but the 3-o'clock tour was just finishing up. What luck. I guess that's another reason to come back.


The side-trail had dead-ended at the wildlife center, so we started backtracking, and within 5 minutes, I had a flat.

My rear tire got a slice in it, literally the day after I put it on. It wasn't all the way through though, and I wasn't about to change a brand new tire, so I've been watching it and it's always looked fine. Today it looked a little sketchy though, so I brought some patches just in case. And it was a good thing too. A tiny little hole had finally worn through and it was just a matter of time before it blew.

A few minutes later we were back in business.

Directly up the main trail, we passed a strange stone building.



It was clearly made from the granite quarried right next to it. The roof was gone. It had a big industrial, sliding front door. There was a similar building next to it, but they didn't connect. There were bars on the windows.

We joked that it was a jail, but figured that the bars were probably to keep people out, or to keep them from getting whatever was kept inside. There was an odd, sunken structure out front too. I'm sure somebody knows what the deal is. Maybe we'll find out on that nebulous day that I keep saying we'll be back on.

Jail or not, we took turns pretending we were in jail and we kept calling it "the jail."





If we thought the trail was tough before, it was just because we hadn't gone far enough yet. Just past the jail, there were a long series of switchbacks and grinders. Again, it was stunning what Sophie was able to climb.

And if the tough climbs weren't enough, it had also begun to rain.



That makes sense. The last time we took Madison bike-riding with us it rained. It was only fitting that it would rain on us again. Nobody cared though. The rain wasn't all that hard, and by now, they're used to it.

At a tee in the trail, we hung a left and climbed up to an Elementary School. The climb must have been a half mile long or more, and eventually, Sophie had to walk, I think for the first time that day.

While waiting, we noticed this wet little lizard, just hanging out at our feet.



We'd seen a bigger version of the same kind back at the jail. We weren't totally sure that this one was alive. It was completely still, even when we got close, but then when we got moving again, it darted away faster than I would have guessed it could move.

I relied on my urban survival training to locate shelter...



A loading dock.

We dried off a bit, had a snack and waited out the storm.



I was telling the girls... I can't even count the number of times I'd done exactly that as a teenager. We'd be out skating and it would be either super hot or about to rain, and we'd go around back of the building, if we weren't around back already, take shelter under the loading dock and possibly have some meagre snack, afforded by the dollar twenty-five we had between us. I have so many good memories like that. It was like the bike-on-the-roof from last week. It felt good to be adding another one to the pile, only this time with the girls.

After a half hour or so it quit raining and we got back on the trail.

Which basically was a mile-long downhill, followed by a mile or more of climbing, which eventually, all three had to walk.



We had taken the fork that ended at Evans Mill Road. Allegedly, the "cascade" was nearby.

There was a picnic area, so we looked around there and found some interpretive signage. There had once been a mill on that site. All that remained now was part of the rock wall that had formed the dam and part of the basement.



The creek was just beyond.



We waded in and explored.

Just downstream, it criscrossed a large granite shoal and poured down various rock faces.



Perhaps it was the cascade of which the guy at the nature center had spoken.

I don't remember if it was Iz or Sophie who noticed it first, but there was a sweet natural water slide right there and they challenged me to slide down it. Of course, I did, which then motivated them to follow suit.





Sophie wasn't quite heavy enough for that line.

Madison was tempted, but didn't want to get soaked or really dirty, so she declined. That turned out to be the right decision.

For some reason, the right side of the video gets cropped if you view it embedded in the page, but if you go to You-Tube and watch the last few seconds of Sophie's slide, you can see Iz examining her shorts.

Seconds later, she exploded into a stamping, screaming fit: "there are bugs all over me, get them off get them off get them off!" and was nearly inconsolable. I learned a few weeks back how arachnophobic she has become. It would appear now that it extends to bugs, in general.

Her and legs, shorts and the bottom of her shirt were covered in macroinvertebrates - mainly some kind of fly nymph and tiny aquatic worms. They were gross, but harmless. I only know that from looking them up later though. At the time, I guessed that maybe that's what they were, but I wasn't really sure, so we spent some time getting them off.

If you go to some random stream in Georgia, find a rock and turn it over. There should be a good many of those little animals clinging to the underside. If there are not, then there could be a water quality problem. It's relative though, so you have to monitor it over time and/or compare it to a nearby stream that is known to have good quality water. The bugs and worms eat algae, dirt and plants, little fish eat the bugs and bigger fish eat the little fish, so they are the basis of the food chain. Various bugs are sensitive to various pollutants, including plain old dirt. A dearth of bugs is generally bad, though an excess of worms might indicate an organic pollutant. Bottom line though: you wipe out the bugs, you wipe out the fish.

I've swum and played in dozens of creeks, waterfalls and shoals all over North Georgia. I've turned over rocks in every one of them and beheld their bug-ridden glory, but I've never gotten any of said bugs all over myself.

There were literally hundreds of them on Isabel and you couldn't just wash them off. They clung really well. I had to pick them off one-by-one. Sophie was covered too, but she was calm about it. "Oh yeah, I have them too." So I picked them off of Iz and Sophie picked them off of herself. We spent about 45 minutes doing this. For some reason, I had maybe 5 or 6 total on me. I've got to believe that there was some specific little spot that they both sat down in that was swarming with them. Maybe a little pool at the top with some mud in it, or maybe some moss that they ran into at the bottom that I missed. I looked carefully for more of them in the sand, and on the slopes and just generally in the water, but I couldn't find them anywhere. No idea.

It didn't occur to me to take a photo until we were almost done picking them off, but here are a few that were left on Sophie's skort, near the end:



Eww.

If it's not ticks, it's fly nymphs and worms. Fortunately, there were no leeches. That had been my first thought. I was really glad there were no leeches. Bugs and blood might have been a bit much.

The ride back was relatively uneventful. It also seemed much shorter because we skipped the side trails and didn't stop much except to drink.

I added it up back at the house. We turned about 20 miles. It took us about 5 and a half hours, but that included hanging out at the nature centers, waiting out the storm and managing The Infestation. Especially given the terrain, it was almost epic. Not quite, but almost.

I'd like to say "It was a top notch, crazy adventure day with the kids!" but I cannot in good conscience declare it to have been. I mean, yeah, we did some really cool stuff and later we all agreed on the coolness of said stuff: "Remeber those bugs? Waaah!" But all day, Iz and Sophie were locked in an endless struggle to be the center of attention and almost nothing kills a good time faster than that.

When Iz has a friend over, Sophie gets jealous if they don't include her in everything, Iz gets jealous if they don't exclude Sophie from everything and they end up competing for attention in every conceivable way and each tries to sabotage the other in some clever way that they can later argue wasn't against the "rules."

Yeah, kids are like that sometimes. In small doses, it's no a big deal, but given enough time it adds up to "unless I'm the center of attention I'm going to distract everyone else from the fun they might otherwise have with all kinds of antics" and you get what we had here last week. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it got to where they were so preoccupied with getting attention that it distracted them from being safe. They both almost took out my front wheel, multiple times each, not to mention each others' and the intentional lagging behind at intersections led to more than one case where a driver got confused and thought the last girl was staying behind, only to have her finally start running across the street whining "Waaaaait." In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that's why they were acting so unsafely up on Yonah with Clark a few weeks back too. When attention is at stake, nothing else matters.

We had a long talk about it when we got home. But, they're young, and I imagine we'll have plenty more of those talks over the next few years.

So, aside from all that, it was a top-notch, crazy adventure day with the kids. We finished it off with some dinner at Doc Chey's and dropped Maddie off at like 9:30 at night. I hope that her folks don't have reservations about letting her stay over next time. I can only imagine her answer to: "So, what did you guys do today?"