Our plans today were for a hike down into the gorge of Cloudland Canyon and then on to another park that might be fun for the kids. We were foiled right off by a closed interpretive center - a place the kids love going to learn more about the local animals, trees, and environment. The disappointed crew went on to the trail head and were greeted by an extremely friendly cat. She loved all the scratches she was getting and the kids loved being around her. They named her Stripes (a.k.a. Sparkles) and we headed on down the trail. There was much talk for most of the way down about the cat, whether and how we could keep her, if she would be waiting for us when we got back, etc. It reminded me of when I tried to convince my mom I could handle a monkey for my 12th birthday.
This trail was a nice dirt and gravel trail for quite awhile until the Grammie-dreaded stairs. We decided to stop and hold this rock up for awhile before heading down. There were 600 steps today so we'd better get started! The walk down was pretty uneventful and sprinkled with cat talk until....Laney slipped through the railing of the stairs and landed in POISON IVY! She alerted me pretty quickly that her legs were itching all over and would "prefer to go back up the stairs". I immediately brought out the alcohol wipes and started trying to get the oil off. Thankfully, we'd been educated almost daily by the Georgia State Park system about the vine. After the first wipe I looked at her legs and they were already angry with bumps, so I got another one out then used one of Grammie's as well. After about 5 minutes, she seemed to calm down and I asked if she wanted to go on and she said yes. So I let her have a picture by herself by one of the waterfalls. Brave girl, that Laney.
We reached the bottom of the gorge then headed on to find our next cache. My gps was giving me some serious issues with all the tree cover so we ended up looking for more than an hour, knowing we were right on top of it. I'm generally a pretty stubborn person especially when it comes to hiking for an hour to get to a cache so I was getting pretty frustrated. Ryan kept looking and encouraging all of us telling us not to give up! When I finally declared defeat, much to Ryan's disappointment, we headed back up toward the trail from the river. We ran into some locals we'd already passed on the way down who asked if we'd found it. I told them about my gps problems and they offered to help, so we ended up finding it after all!
Now the hard part, the climb back up! This would be the 3rd of 4 canyon climbs Grammie and I would need to do in order to get our canyon climber t-shirts, so we were determined! I think the kids were moving quickly just to see if the cat was waiting on them. Alas, she wasn't but we did make it back up to the top!
Amazing that the kids look practically the same after 3 hours hiking in a canyon! I assure you Grammie and I did not! It was now already almost 2pm, so we made a quick lunch and ate in the car on the way to the next spot - James H. Floyd State Park. The kids have been asking to do pedal boats every since our trip last year so it was fun to actually get to take them to do it here!
The lake was nice a calm and we were greeted warmly by the resident ducks.
Ryan had fun annoying this blue heron that was looking for some dinner.
After exhausting our legs even more, we headed to the playground for awhile before going to find the next cache. This was a quick one and the kids loved the creativity of the hide!
On the way we noticed a road and campground named after Juliette Gordon Low - the founder of Girl Scouts - neat!
Off to take her to the airport in the morning and on to the next park!
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