Cwopinger's Trail Limo Build, Travels, and BS Thread

Morning John. Sorry to leave you hanging over the weekend. Guess you figured out I was taking the weekend off.

 

Morning, Ping!! Have a great day!!!

 

You too!

 

Good morning John. Have a great Wednesday.

 

Morning sir

 

Good morning you fine gentlemen have a great Friday eve.

 

Blevin, it's going to happen. Packing up the house and headed out on the 20th. Might see ya in the next year out on the road.
Zim

 

Good morning John. Early start for you, hope it ends early too. Have a great Friday.

 

Hi Dave! Road-trip time! Did you sell the house and are going all in for travel?

I’m doing my Alaska trip this year, plan on heading north toward the middle of July, will spend August in AK.

I guess I better finish that GA Traverse trip report before I start another one. Lol

 

We were renting. Gave notice and storing all the crap which is not much. Been downsizing for a while. We'll travel for atleast a year and give it some thought after that. Lots out there to see...................including Alaska. So happy to see you going. Hope it all goes well and most important be safe.
Zim

 

That sounds awesome! What direction are you headed first? Maybe we will run in to each other. Safe travels to you.

 

I'll be down in Lecanto for several weeks with a very sick Sister, then up to DC, over to KC and then down to Plano TX. After that, who knows lol. On our second trip thru FL we'll yell at ya. Thanks
Zim

 

Sir

 

Good morning guys. Hope you are both having a great weekend!

 

You too, sir!!

 

Day 3 on the GA Traverse

After much laziness on my part and the summertime activities getting going (but mostly laziness ) I will wrap up our Georgia Traverse adventure. Big things are afoot and I don’t want to leave this hanging any longer.

So, day 3 broke after a cold night at Jack's River Fields campground. As we ate breakfast and packed up we weren’t sure what to expect for the day. We knew we would be doing what is known as the Cohutta Wilderness/Big Frog Mountain Loop which is about 75 miles of forest service roads around the perimeter of one of the largest Wilderness Areas east of the Mississippi River. After this we have the last 100 or so miles to the Alabama state line and we really didn’t know how long this would take, so we were playing it by ear on where we would stop for the night. As Randy finished folding up his RTT I went for a walk around the campground. While we had a nice little stream running beside our site the other side of the camp where the big group had been when we first arrived was the best spot in the camp. If you go site #4 is the one you want and make sure you have a fly rod with you.


Campsite #4 is at the end of the road


and the Jack's River behind it.


Looking back into the campground from #4

As we left camp we quickly started gaining altitude and started running into the clouds. This was shaping up to be a gray morning.






Top of the mountain at Mountaintown overlook. I don’t see any town…

A few more miles and we were at a name I remembered from my youth, Lake Conasauga Campground. How do I know this name you ask? Because I grew up in Dalton, GA which seemed a really long way away back in my teenage years. All that time when we would go to the woods I never knew exactly where we were and how much cool stuff was around here. This was way before the internet and cell phones and the old timers were keeping this stuff to themselves. Probably so a bunch of teenagers didn’t come out here and spoil all their fun. Anyway, time to drive.

About 5 miles down the road we had dropped a little elevation and the clouds were starting to burn off.


The day is starting to look pretty good at the Mill Creek overlook.

After we passed the Lake Conasauga turnoff we worked our way down the mountain and turned onto a well maintained gravel road named West Cow Pen Rd. It was obviously a local road that was well used and nice enough we were rolling along at the posted 35 MPH. I made a comment over the radio if the roads stayed like this we might finish up today. Little did we know…

After about 10-12 miles of high speed gravel we came to a small bridge marked single vehicle only. It seemed like it was in pretty good shape but we crossed one at a time. This bridge was also the Tennessee state line so as we rolled across the Toyota nav announced “Welcome to Tennessee” and right across from us was the Tennessee “welcome center.”




It’s really seen it’s better days and it’s sad that assholes have to trash facilities like this.

We had about another mile of well graded gravel when the track turned us off onto a 2 track and we started to switchback our way up a mountain. The road quickly started to deteriorate into a rocky, cobbled track. It was rough enough when we got to the ridge line I dropped my tire pressure from my gravel pressure of 25 down to about 18 psi. The “road” was still open and in use but it obviously got very little use and less maintenance. While it wasn’t super technical there were washouts and ruts at just about every switchback. It quickly became tedious enough we weren’t concerned with taking pictures and I was also spotting Randy through some of the washouts as he was having some problems figuring out where to place his tires from the drivers seat. We continued to crawl along at about 10 mph for the next 15-20 miles until we connected with a different road that thankfully was in pretty good shape.

We stopped for lunch on the side of the trail and while we were eating we discussed our plan for the rest of the day since it was obvious we would not be finishing up today. The route makes a big loop and would take us back to where we camped last night but we didn’t know what kind of shape the road was going to be in or how long it would take us to get back there. We decided to press on and hope we made it back but would wild camp if it started getting dark before we made it there. Luckily the rest of the route was in much better shape and we were able to roll along at a nice 20-25 mph.









As we worked our way back toward the previous nights camp I told Randy to stop and we would gather some kindling and smaller wood to get a fire going tonight because I wanted him to have a campfire on this trip. We stopped and he grabbed a small amount of blowdown and asked if it was enough, it wasn’t. I kept piling wood into the back of his truck until I was sure we had enough then we moved on. We made it back to our previous campground about 4:00 pm. Of course another truck had showed up and grabbed site #4 We went back to our old site and set up camp and started to make supper.

Randy broke out his fancy fire pit/grill thing to cook him some burgers while I made tacos. Digging around in my cooler I also found a shrimp cocktail to give us a nice appetizer .



After we finished, I started stacking kindling on top of Randy’s charcoal in his grill. In no time I had a nice little fire going and laid one of the big chunks of wood across the top of the grill to see if I could get it burning.


One happy camper taking pictures of his campfire.

Once the fire was going nicely it was time for an adult beverage. Randy’s not much of a drinker so he enjoyed his hard cider while I had a couple of proper libation’s.




Fancy, artistic shallow depth of field shots. Lol

About 9:00 the fire had burned out and we settled in to bed. In the morning we would wrap up the last 100 miles of the Traverse and head home.

 

Wonderful story!! Thank you for sharing!!

 

Day 4 on the GA Traverse, the final chapter.

Day 4 has us up and rolling by 8. I took the lead for a change since we were driving through my old home town of Dalton and told Randy I would play tour guide for him. We climbed back up the mountain to a clear and bright morning in contrast to yesterdays cloudy, gray morning.


Mountaintown overlook again. What a difference 24 hours can make.


We covered the 15 miles to our turn off quickly and dropped down the west side of the mountain. At the base of the mountain we hit pavement and pulled over to air up. From here to the end of the route there is only 2 short dirt sections the rest is all pavement so we went up to our regular road pressures. Heading into to Dalton I started to recognize the road names but it didn’t look like what I remembered. It dawned on me I haven’t been back here since 1993 for my 10 year high school reunion. Holy cow, that’s 29 years ago!


As we made it to GA 71, what we called Cleveland Hwy, I told Randy we were about 3 miles from my old house and I wanted to go see it. We headed that way and I was calling out streets that I remembered. I told Randy there would be about a 5 acre hay field in front of the house and it should be right about here… only it wasn’t. The next thing I saw was the old middle school, which has been torn down and a new school built on the same property, that meant we had passed my old house.

We turned around and headed back toward my house. I pulled over at a side street that I knew was just about at my driveway. I got out and looked across the street and realized we WERE looking at my old house. The view of the house was blocked by trees that I really don’t remember and most of the hay field was now the center and 2 southbound lanes of Cleveland Hwy. Wow! No wonder I missed it the first time.




The front windows you can see would be my old room. No barn that I can see anymore. A lot has changed!


This was my next door neighbor’s house who I’m still in contact with, his old house is the office for a rock and granite place.

With that we headed back to the route and drove through Dalton, I called out a few places I remembered but it has changed so much I need to go back for a week just to drive around. What a difference 30 years makes.

We drove west out of Dalton and into a part of the state I don’t ever remember driving through. This part of the route is a hit of a letdown after the rest of it. Like I mentioned this section is 95% paved roads, there is a little bit of gravel but it always dumped us back out on the main road we were following so it was just put in the route because it was gravel. We did turn off the pavement for a 12 mile and 5 mile section of FS roads in 2 small, isolated areas of National Forest. They were a nice break from the pavement but were just 2 tracks running the ridge line of some low foothills. Dropping out of the woods we made a few more turns and ran out of track on the map.




With that, we were done. End of the Georgia Traverse. A nondescript 2 lane, the only way we could tell it was the state line was the gps and the pavement type changed.

So that’s a wrap for the GA Traverse. It’s well worth your time if you are in the south to block out 4 days and give it a run. You could shave a few hours off of the route by stopping in Dalton instead of going all the way to the state line if you wanted to. If you do finish the route out, look at the zigs and zags before the last 2 NF sections they are only there to grab some gravel. It makes more sense to just stay on the pavement between the NF sections IMO.

Sorry for the lack of pictures toward the end of this tale. The terrain around the Cohutta Wilderness was just rough enough to keep me focused on driving and spotting for Randy, I didn’t even think to grab my phone for pics while I was spotting him. Around Dalton and to the end of the route there is really not much to take pictures of other than cattle and farm fields.

 

Sounds like it was a great trip!!

 

Good morning guys . Hope it’s an easy Monday for you.

It was a great trip, I will do that route again I’m sure. I just need to get the trip report up in a timely manner