Blue Ridge Day 1

Spent the day up in Blue Ridge today.. We started out with a ride on the typical Blue Ridge singletrack trails...Long Branch, Green Mountain, Flat Creek, Stanley Gap and a gravel road that had about 30 pickup trucks with gun racks parked along the side...hmmmm. We got some friendly advice from a hunter to not get off of the main road, as there were lots of guys with guns in the woods. So that pretty much meant no more exploration, so we just rode back down the road the same way we came. It was pretty steep though and not a whole lot of fun, so we weren't terribly disappointed.

Next we waffled about paddling the Toccoa, as it looked like we'd be dragging the canoe more than paddling it. We eventually decided to put in along Old Dial road and just paddle a 4 mile section. Ugghhh...what an exercise in patience! We were moving at about 2 mph and constantly in and out of the boat dragging it over rocks and through shoals.

About halfway down the river, I remembered that I stupidly left the keys to our shuttle vehicle at the put-in, so I jumped out of the boat and ran the road back to the car while Daniel and Bo kept going. Wow, it only took me about 12 minutes to run what took us close to an hour to paddle...nice!

It took the guys a while to get to the takeout, and I think I actually got the better end of the deal, running back to the car. At least I had time to snap a few pics.







After the paddle we had to decide between camping and staying here.



And it had this view....



...from the hot tub. Needless to say, it didn't take us long to decide where to stay!

Tomorrow we're running in the morning and riding in the afternoon near Cooper Creek.