Monty's North Geogia Trip

We left Birmingham relatively early in hopes of being able to swing by Green's in Atlanta on our way. We were going to meet up with Mitch and Ted on the way to Atlanta so they could follow us. They got ahead of us as we got stuck in traffic trying to get out of town. We eventually met up right on the outskirts of Atlanta. We were running behind, but decided to swing by Green's anyway. We headed on to Ellijay and I had to stop for gas. Mitch and Ted headed on and I called Monty to tell him we would be late. We were originally going to meet at the BK in Ellijay, but he gave us directions to Mulberry Gap. I was afraid we would not make it in time for the ride, but I believe a few others were slightly delayed, so we got there just in time to jump on the bike and head out with everyone.

This ride started off with a nice little climb up the gravel road. We climbed, and climbed and climbed a little more. After about 5 miles we were greeted by this beautiful sight:

We finally jumped on some singletrack (Bear Creek trail I think) and enjoyed some much appreciated downhill (Approximately 4 miles or so). I took the lead so I could snap a few pictures of everyone coming down the hill. There were a couple people putting in water berms on the trail and they were piled quite high. This slowed me down a bit, which is usually a good thing as I tend to go faster than I should on trail I am unfamiliar with. I found a switchback with some roots and a small drop and snapped a few shots. Joe with his "skillz" shows us how to get behind the seat:

Michael however mush have be distracted by some crazy looking guy in the woods and took a slightly less conventional approach to negotiating the turn. I hope he ended up being all right, the only casualty he allowed was a slightly bent rear derailleur.

We stopped to look at the Gennett poplar. It is an extremely old tree that was growing beside the trail. After this the trail had some climbs and downhills and we got on Pinhoti 1. There were some nice climbs followed by great twisting downhills.

We jumped on Pinhoti 2 somewhere along the way and continued on. Near the very end was some great fast flowing singletrack with lots of nice little whoopties great for jumping. I had my bike off the ground so many times there was a huge smile on my face. We came out on the road a little ways from the camp and rode back the remainder of the way. We got back to Mulberry gap in plenty of time and had a few beers while we were waiting on dinner. We rode close to 20 miles (the Garmin said I burned over 3600 calories) and I was feeling quite hungry. I took a shower right before dinner and showed up a little after everyone else.

The ladies at MG cooked us an excellent meal of Spaghetti and Meatballs. I ate two plates (including about 7 of the meatballs) and a salad before she told us to save room for desert. I generally don't care for chocolate, but they had some homemade brownies and ice cream and I decided to try it and it was delicious also. After dinner and sitting around chatting for a while I decided to go sit in one of the hot tubs to relax.

There were 2 and the other one was completely full, so I went to the other one and had it all to myself. After a while I started stretching my legs and they started to cramp up on me. I decided it was time to get out and go to bed. After all I knew I was going to need some rest for the following day.

Here is an overview of our ride for the day:

I need to work on my layout of the pictures. It lays out nice when I type it up, but when I publish it, things get moved around and I am too lazy to fix it.

The pictures from this ride are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/grundcm/EllijayGA2008_04_11