Ray Charles had it on his mind. Gladys Knight took the midnight train there. From the low mountains bordering the Cumberland plateau in the northwest corner of Georgia, we could hear a string of trains passing through the Dixie town of Trenton below. Personally, we like a good train whistle at night. We sleep better. Fortunately, the night time temperatures were in the sixties, a good twenty degrees below the tropics of Florida. Perfectly adequate sleeping weather if you leave the rain fly off.
It’s a bit clumsy being back in a tent. Granted, it’s only day one but everything feels supremely difficult. Perhaps it was just the remnants of the mid-afternoon slog through the crowded Atlanta freeways making set-up feel like a chore. There is no cadence to camp life yet. We can’t remember where items are crammed in the truck. Mosquitos are plentiful. Yellow jackets get to your food before you do. Getting back to tent life is not like riding a bike unless perhaps you never learned to ride a bike in the first place. Then, it is exactly like that – painful and dangerous.
While Barbie stole all of the accolades, the film “Cocaine Bear” was the runaway surprise cult theater hit, moved quickly to stream on Amazon Prime. We pitched camp in the same Chattahoochee forest and quite possibly the same Cloudland Canyon State Park where the protagonist of Cocaine Bear once prowled. Spoiler alert, the movie is about a bear that finds a stash of illegal cocaine and goes bear-zirk.
The real terror of the Chattahoochee is the way the rangers have failed to mark any of the tent-only camp sites which are embedded deep in the woods of Cloudland Canyon. After an hour of bushwhacking, a friendly camp neighbor physically guided us to our Site 4. She said it had taken her a week to find her Site 6. Later that evening, while making my way to the truck, Eric was cornered by a couple making the most of their iPhone flash light in the pitch black of the Georgia night who wanted to know if he could point them towards Site 18. They would have had a better chance fighting off a drug crazed bear than locating that site at night.
The West Rim Trail at Cloudland Canyon provides peak-a-boo views through power lines and thick foliage of the Cumberland Plateau below. Heralded on Trip Advisor has one of the great sunset hikes because of its western exposure, we walked off a hearty portion of tuna casserole hoping for sunset spectacular. What we got was the sun setting behind a thick canopy of trees. It was beautiful in a very ordinary sort of way. There is probably a message there to appreciate what the world gives you and not what the internet wants you to believe.
There is most definitely a transition from a pampered life behind the gates to living on the ground. Clean and comfortable are relative terms. Showers are a luxury. Everything you use to eat, sleep, or sit needs to be schlepped dozens or hundreds of steps. Water is precious. Memories of past adventures romanticize the natural beauty while the PITA nature of tent life is forgotten. Nature breaks you down before you build yourself up. As we dry out our gear soaked from the water bottle that emptied in the tent last night we are squarely in the breaking down phase. We are thankful it is not raining.
The morning was early but faded back deep, so it was a good sleep on the first night on the Hests. We decided after 10T-iversary that we would replace the Barksdale pandemic foam pad and buy over-priced sleep systems. The top brand is Hest. They are used by Astronauts Mars for a good nights sleep on Mars. Now we’re Hesties.
After a good sleep you need a good stretch so we went to Main Overlook to see it the morning. We understood why the park was called Cloudland. Stretched out for the 3 to 4 miles that the eye could see through the humid air was Sitton’s gulch. The heavy air over the land could be mistaken for clouds. The six hundred feet of elevation also provided good cell service to plan our next dest. Even though our visit was brief, we could see the appeal of southern Appalachian living. The temperatures were cooler, the roads twisty, and the views on top long. For retirees that cannot take the heat of a Florida summer but are not looking to shovel snow, the hills have the answer.
Tossing a dart at the map for next dest, we landed on Louisville, Kentucky. Home of baseball bats and derby races, Louisville does not get the respect it might possibly deserve. The alternative was Nashville, but it has already blown up. It does not need the notoriety of a Sheric visit. Hey Louisville, it’s batter up, and to continue a bad pun, off to the races.
