Woke up this morning to a beautiful Saturday with clean, blue skies, and a couple of sons with far too much energy! After an hour of them tearing around the house, my wife dispatched us to the woods to burn off some of it. Although we don't live in too rural of an area, we're still blessed to be surrounded with a ton of hiking trails. East of our town there are huge tracts of land belonging to the Corps of Engineers, the state, and Komatsu, that have all been "developed" with some devotion to public use. It was to the Corps trails that we turned today...
One of our frequent visit spots during the summer had been the Etowah River below Allatoona Dam. The river was the attraction in the warm months since the water is shallow and rocky when they dam isn't generating. But now that it's cooler, we got a chance to leave the river below and explore the overlook trail that leads to the top of the dam.
At the base of the dam, Cooper's Furnace sits. This is the structure for which the area is named. It's an old, war era furnace that was use for large scale metal work - railroad rails ties mostly, I believe. It was spared from being at the bottom of Lake Allatoona by geography and about 1000 yards.
And here are the two little guys responsible for getting us out in the woods today.
The trail heading up to the overlook is basically a road. In fact, I could have driven nearly the whole way up, and I was surprised to get to the top and find a paved parking lot, dam operations center, and an official road leading in front the north. I hadn't even realized there was anything up there when we set out.
A view from the top of the river and the furnace below.
Here's a shot facing the other direction of the lake side of the dam. The lake's been drained a good bit for the year, but there's always water in this portion.
On our way back down...
Good hike. Good weather. Good company.
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