Friday, November 6, 2020
Considering I've been working late nights for the last couple of months, trying for an early start seemed pointless. Instead, I left mid-morning and picked up I-20 East.
My first stop was Hard Labor Creek State Park. The park is named for the neighboring creek, in turn named by slaves who used to work in the area. The park itself surrounds Lake Rutledge, named after a local family killed by local Native Americans in 1813. On a much lighter note, the lake and park were used in the filming of Friday the 13th, Part IV, Jason Lives.
Somehow, I did miss a turn while trying to find the park. When I realized I was nowhere near where I wanted to be, I gave in and pulled out the GPS. You know you're in rural Georgia when it's giving you directions down dirt roads.
I did eventually find the park, check in and get a map. There are state parks geared towards boaters, campers, mountain biking, hiking or horseback riding. Hard Labor Creek has twenty-two miles of equestrian trails, seventeen miles of mountain bike trails, numerous cabins for rent and all of two and a half miles of hiking trails. But, I did know this going in.
The yellow trail is just a mile loop through the woods.
The red trail loops a little further past a beaver dam, one of two on this trip, or so I was led to believe.
After leaving the park, it was a short drive east on I-20 to the city of Greensboro, county seat of Greene County. Both were named after Revolutionary War General Nathanial Greene. Hwy 15 takes you through town and north into the Oconee National Forest. Twelve miles north of town is a small sign for a State Historic Area. Follow the signs east for two miles and they'll send you down a well maintained fire road to the parking area.
This is the sight of the former town of Scull Shoals. The first Europeans known to have visited the area were part of Hernando deSoto entourage in 1540. They left behind diseases that ravaged the local population. The first settlers moved here in 1782 and named it Scull Shoals for the human skulls they found buried along the Oconee River. They changed the spelling since they considered "skull" to be back luck.
It didn't take long before the town had built it's own grist mill, cotton gin and the first paper mill in Georgia. Periodic flood and droughts hit the town, but it wasn't until 1887 when a flood was just too devastating for the town to recover.
There's a nice map posted on a kiosk by the parking lot...
However, the loop trail gets more and more vague as you go, with no blazes marked on trees whatsoever. I followed the obvious trail as far back as I could. But, after the chimney, there isn't even a clearly walked path further beyond. It saddened me how neglected the site is. There's even a Friends of Scull Shoals, but it's clear no one's been out to clear trails in a while. Hell, if I lived closer, I'd volunteer.
By this point it was late afternoon and I was ready for some food. The first place I saw was Holcomb's Barbecue. Their dining room is closed, but there were a few places to sit outside. The food...delicious!
My home for the night was the Holiday Lodge. It's hard to judge the place. The entire left side of the facility is under renovation. The right side was perfectly fine, just nothing special.
One thing I've really started enjoying over the last few years is checking out the local breweries. In Greensboro, it's the Oconee Brewing Company. The building first housed the Chero-Cola bottling facility. In the 1920's The Coca-Cola Company forced them to drop "cola" from their name. They came out with a line of flavored sodas and renamed themselves Nehi.
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