Just a day ride in North Georgia

Best ride so far on my new wr250r.

I got up at 04:50 and pulled out of the garage at 05:40. I made it to the Conoco in East Ellijay by 06:45 where I was supposed to meet a couple of inmates from ADVRider. Well, 07:00 came and went. At 07:20 I gave up waiting.....nobody showed up. I should have asked for a roll-call.

Anyway, back to the riding...I rode Tatum Lead OHV and most of Rock Creek OHV, until I got turned around by a tree across the road. About that time I got a text from one of my riding buddies and I decided to head to Dahlonega to meet up with him to ride some. He had gotten called in to work at the last minute and had to work until 3pm. So, I was in no hurry to get to Dahlonega. I took some back roads from East Ellijay to connect to Nimblewill Gap and road that south to FS-28 to Hightower Church to Miles Berry. I stopped for lunch in Dahlonega and then pulled into Rider's Hill around noon. Will was able to take the rest of the day off so we formulated a new plan. We took some back roads to Suches and rode Flatlands, Cooper Creek, 180, Hatchet Creek, and then, after a petrol stop, rode up past Lake Burton.

We ended up on Upper Hightower rd and then rode Charlie's Creek. It was a sound plan, but then we, or I, made a wrong turn. Somewhere along Charile's Creek rd, I came around a corner to find a rattlesnake stretched across half the rd. I threw the one leg facing the large snake across the back of the bike to give the venomous snake a clear shot at the bike, but not me. Back to the wrong turn....we started up a two track trail that was obviously "The Road Less Traveled". It was very rocky, very rutted, and a bit overgrown. It was a little like the rough section on Flatland. I came up to a tree across the road. It was laying at angle and it was a larger tree than I had ever crossed, but I went for it anyway. I thought I did a good job until I stopped, turned my head around and watched Will cross. He took the smart option and choose a much better point to cross than I did....we both got across it. I captured this part on video. Eventually, we came to a series of trees across the road that. This stopped us. So, we created a new path around the tree's. This worked until a couple of minutes later we ran in to a chain across the path with a private property sign. Not wanting to backtrack, I looked at my gps and the trail we were on was a loop that ended about a mile away. We decided to go off track and try and find the other leg of the loop. The terrain was very hilly, and with the wet leaves, steep climbs, we worked up quite a sweat and had to change course several times just make some forward progress. Well, what I didn't know was that being under a full canopy, my gps didn't have a clear signal to any satellite. This meant that the other leg of the loop was a little further away than I anticipated. But eventually, we found it....on the other side of a river, the Tallulah River. Campers on the other side of the river were watching us. It didn't appear very deep, but the bank was too high, so we rode up stream until Will found us a suitable crossing point.

We hooked up with the other leg of the loop and made the infamous river crossing that Charile's Creek is known for. Charlie's Creek was a fun ride, but it sure made for a long ride. Wait to you find out my mileage for the day.

On the way back south, we rode Chimney Mtn & Tray Mtn rd. When we made it to circle on Chimney Mtn we were a bit surprised to see two small cars parked. About 10 minutes later we see an older man and several teenagers walking out Chimney Mtn on the Tray Mtn side, then about 5 minutes we pass a 4x4 offroad recovery wrecker. I stopped to talk to the driver he was looking for a red Cavalier, one of the cars at the circle. Apparently, one of the teenagers had gotten lost and was following his gps. I have no idea how he got that car through the rough, rutted out section, but he did. Anyway, the wrecker driver stated that he had punctured his tranny or oil and that we would see the oil on our way out. The oil trail led right to the rock that did the damage.

The rest of the ride back was all pavement and uneventful.

I pulled back into my garage at 20:50. that's 8:50pm for you civilians. My total mileage for the day was 358 miles ( gps miles, not odo ).

Short viddy of part of the action:

Good video, to bad the road ran out, cheer`s

Fiftygrit wrote:

Good video, to bad the road ran out, cheer`s

Well, with the long paved ride to that area...the road running out and us having to trailblaze a bit was really what made it worth it.