Saturday, August 8, 2009

Lumpkin's Little Grand Canyon

The kids went back to school today and Elizabeth and I returned to our Friday road trips. We decided to start with a longer one. We planned out a trip to Providence Canyon in Lumpkin GA, also known as The Little Grand Canyon. We took 27 down from LaGrange, through Columbus and pretty much right to the front gate of the park. It was 100 miles down and 100 miles back. I pulled the sled into the garage with 200.1 new miles on it.

The trip down was uneventful, but I did discover that I never want to be behind a chicken truck on a motorcycle. The smell was horrendous and gave me flashbacks of the chicken coops of my youth (I loved my youth but I don't like chickens).


There are many hikes there and we decided on the relatively easy 3.1 mile trek through the canyon and then up along the ridge. I was in jeans and my Doc Martins, so I wasn't really dressed for distance summer hiking in Georgia.

Below is one of the stream beds on the bottom.


There are a few old cars out along the path that the woods have claimed as their own. We were down here a year or so ago and it seemed like the vehicles have decayed exponentially since our last visit. It is hard for me to take a color picture of a rusted out car body in the middle of the woods - it has black & white written all over it. I've started exploring with this medium and the pictures may be rough for awhile - sorry. Most are too light - these are on the dark side.




This is Elizabeth along the ridge, followed by a sweaty picture of myself. The path way along the ridge has progressed further away from the ledge over time because of the unstable ground. The view is still spectacular but is slowly getting lost among the growing underbrush. I imagine it was awesome 10-20 years ago.





We left in the morning around 8:00 and the weather channel website said 65F. Elizabeth and I were wearing our leather jackets and were still a little cool during certain shaded parts of the trip. On the trip back we passed a sign saying the temperature was 98F. The leather was still protecting us but, Man, was it hot. When it is that hot, even the wind at 60 doesn't to much to cool you down.

1 comment:

  1. That looks like a cool spot, I wasn't expecting something so beautiful when you told us about it. Strange that it was all caused by poor farming practices.

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