main overview at Cloudland Canyon State Park

Note: This column was published in the Barrow Journal on June 3, 2015.

Last month we had time to take a short vacation, so we decided it would be a good time to visit Cloudland Canyon State Park. It is located in the very northwest corner of Georgia. We stayed in a cabin in the nearby small town of Rising Fawn, and from there we were only 20 minutes from Chattanooga, TN, and four miles from the Alabama border.

The canyon is a must-see, if you haven’t been there. I didn’t even know about it until I saw it on an episode of GPB’s Georgia Outdoors. The canyon is vast and beautiful, full of trees and shrubs, painting it with different shades of green.

Cloudland Canyon

The ancient sandstone is still eroding, and it’s a great place for geology enthusiasts. Over 200 million years ago, this area was completely under the ocean. Lookout Mountain was formed through the same seismic activity as the Appalachian Mountains, but later, as the ocean receded, the rim of the canyon was a beach. To this day, you can see ripples in the rock that long ago was sand on the ancient shore. The canyon was formed from rivers draining out to sea – what we now call Sitton Gulch Creek and its tributary, Daniel Creek.

The ripples in the rock indicate where there was once an ancient shoreline.

For three days, we went over to the park in the mornings and hiked. There are trails for those who are experienced hikers and backpackers, and then there are those for the rest of us. We took the moderate trails, not just because we had small children, but because my husband and I are noticing that hiking more strenuous trails isn’t as easy as it used to be!

There is a short trail anyone can use to see the grand vista of the canyon, which we stopped at first. Then we took a trail down to Cherokee falls. I was enchanted with this small crevice between the towering rock walls, filled with beautiful hardwoods and moss, and the sound of water cascading into a small green pool. We sat on the rocks for a while to eat a snack before we left.

There are two waterfalls you can hike down to, but if you don’t think you can make it back up the 600+ steps, I recommend just going to that first waterfall. The second waterfall, Hemlock Falls, was beautiful, but you can’t get as close to it, and there’s a small platform that you are restricted to while viewing it. That wouldn’t be fun on crowded days.

Cherokee Falls (photo taken without a tripod)

I would have liked to have continued down from these waterfalls and hiked ­­­­Sitton’s Gulch Trail, which is a two-mile hike along the Sitton Gulch Creek. I have a feeling it would have been a gorgeous hike with several mini-waterfalls along the way. But we weren’t sure we were prepared to keep going down when you have to turn around and go all the way back up!

Another day we took the West Rim Trail, and I highly recommend this trail. It has beautiful views overlooking the canyon and the nearby small town of Trenton, Georgia. We drove into the rim and parked so that we could make the hike a little shorter than it would have been if we started it at its trailhead, which was the same place where the waterfall trails start. Except for one part that went slightly uphill, it was moderately flat, but anyone on this trail should be sure-footed because you have to walk over thick roots and rocks. There are also several drop-offs with no railing. Our boys did extremely well on this nearly five-mile hike, but they were ready for it to end by the time we got back to our car!

view from West Rim Trail

Little did we know that the area around our cabin would be one of the loveliest places we’ve ever stayed. We had mountain views, and there were small lakes within walking distance. The best part was that there was a horse pasture on the other side of the fence in our cabin’s backyard! The boys were thrilled to get to pet the friendly horses and feed them carrots.

our cabin

See the red roof in the middle of the photo? That was our cabin.

in the backyard of our cabin

taken from the backyard of the cabin

first time fishermen

My boys went fishing for the first time during our trip at one of the little lakes near the cabin. Every evening they went down there and caught lots of little sunfish, though most were so little they needed to be thrown back, and we didn’t have the right bait to catch the large mouth bass that we could see swimming through the shallow water. By the time we left, my eight-year-old could bait and cast by himself, and my five-year-old was getting pretty good at casting the line too.

If you’d like to learn more about Cloudland Canyon, check out http://www.gastateparks.org/cloudlandcanyon. And if you’re interested in the cabin we stayed in, just send me an e-mail and ask, and I’ll send you a link.

I still have lots of photos I’d like to share with you from our trip, but I’m going to save most of those for some Nature Watch posts. So stay tuned, and thanks for reading my blog!