more power

on the trail again...can't wait to get on the trail again

Hiking season is March through October minus July and August.  Those are the months Georgia weather is so pleasant that you must go outside at least once a day to remember why you're alive. In honor of not going hiking on this very gloomy day on the first Saturday in March, I'm going to tell you about a recent adventure in its stead.

Amber, Jessica, Valina, Cheryl, Hannah

Spring has already come and gone...well, not really.  February was unusually warm which totally threw me for a loop.  I missed the first weekend of warm weather due to illness and was so sad that I could not join my friends for a little jaunt through the woods.  It was chilly again for a week, and then we were blasted with heat.  Thus, hiking season began early...except it was not I who planned the hikes because the loop that was thrown at me affected my brain because hiking season isn't supposed to begin until March...and it was February.

talk about hitches...trees down

Our first hike was originally to Cochran Schoals, but everyone else in Atlanta must have received the same memo, and the parking lot was overflowing.  Fortunately for us, we knew to backtrack our lives by five seconds and parked at the Powers Island trail.  If these people had only known that there's a little bridge that connects the trails (and if we had only known where that little bridge was at the beginning of our hike instead of halfway through) they would not have experienced an Atlanta parking nightmare.

enjoying the view behind us

So we ended up at Powers Island, part of hike number 3 in the book.  It's part of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, which is this amazing forest inside a city.  Every time we hike one of these trails we laugh at how our expectations of Atlanta are cement and metal and then you come upon these little woodsy hideaways and it's like you're in north Georgia (except you can't see for miles on top of mountains since the elevation isn't that high on these trails, but you do always get at least one peak of the Chattahoochee and sometimes something else that's wonderful).

way down yonder...

Back to Powers Island...

It's not the most interesting hike, but it was a great way to break us in.  It reminded me a lot of Jones Bridge and the part we didn't hike because of how hot it was.  We doubled back over the monster hill to add miles to the hike.  We walked 3.5 miles.

a bird that my zoom couldn't quite capture

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Photo courtesy of Jessica:

the monkey tree