Tallulah Gorge GA

heading onto the bridge

Hi, it's Grace here. So after we left West Virginia we came to this new place known as Tallulah Gorge. When we arrived we got the camper set up and headed up to the Information Center. We asked about the hiking and the one that sounded the most interesting to us was the Gorge floor trail. This trail required a permit and sounded pretty cool. The only problem was that they only handed out a hundred permits per day so you had to get there at 8am. 

view of the suspension bridge

The next morning, I had to do one of the things I hate to do most ...Get up before 8:00 o'clock! It was definitely worth it though. When we arrived we had to do a ten minute orientation. Then, we started on the trail. The first half hour of the trail was stairs, but it wasn't that hard. After we got to the bottom of the stairs we crossed a suspension bridge that had a great view of the river eighty feet below us. Now I must say I am very proud of my mother. She made it across the bridge without freaking out or throwing up, even with my dad shaking it just to mess with her.  After we crossed the suspension bridge we started on what I counted as the beginning of the trail.

Our first obstacle was crossing the river.  We did this by jumping across rocks to get to the trail but just getting down to the river was hard enough. You had this huge rock you had to climb over and it was super steep. Then we got to the fun part... at least for me. We started jumping rocks which was a little hard for everyone other then me and my dad, but I had fun. Most of the rest of the trail was climbing over rocks which is my favorite thing to do. We also passed by four waterfalls which were gorgeous.

The best part of the day was the slide. The hike had been strenuous and we all were sweating. We were pretty happy when we reached the natural water slide. The water felt really nice and you built up so much speed going down because of the algae on the rocks. The hardest part was getting out of the water to go down the slide again. You had to climb up with a rope which was extremely slippery. Everone was sliding back down and falling. I also met a really nice girl who showed me how to go down the slide. Love the southern hospitality!

 

After swimming for an hour or so, we had a choice to make. We could either go back the way we came or climb up more rocks at a 45 degree angle to the top which was a 1/4 mile away. We decided to try the climb which was hard but fun. Then we had to walk back another trail to reach our truck. It was a hard hike and I slept the rest of the day, but it was fun. I definitely would do it again!