October & November & December 7-15, 2022: Sarahs Creek Campground in the Chattahoochee National Forest
Our main objectives returning to NH this fall, besides loving this season in New England, were to help out our sons. We spent the majority of the month of October finishing up our son Joshua's house projects. Finishing is a good description since most of the work was of the finishing type, e.g. the inside trim on windows that were replaced some time ago. Trimming the windows was the biggest task since there were 15 in all. When Josh was working Jane was my helper, otherwise she was the painter for the projects. I was able to bike ride during most weekdays on my old route I took during the CoViD pandemic when we lived in Dover. I also got in a blood donation. Jane and I both got our biannual teeth cleanings which provided Jane an opportunity to visit with some old coworkers. She had one other opportunity to visit coworkers and friends, unfortunately it was at the funeral of a friend's mother. One weekend we travelled to the Connecticut/New York border region for my Aunt's 90th birthday party, another reason for returnig to New England for the fall.
Most of November was spent at our other son Luke's house/farm. We did help with a few house projects but most of the time was spent working outside on the Christmas tree farm which consists of a few acres of tress around the house and an 11 acre parcel across their private road, Balsam Way. The husband of the husband/wife tree farm owners died a couple of years ago. It was unclear how much of the farm was maintained and operated after the husband's death. My son bought the farm in August and as the past few months evolved he heard bits and pieces about the tree farm but those pieces didn't all fit together. The uncertainty was exacerbated by the fact that a developer bought the property by the surviving widow and therefore the owner my son bought the property from wasn't a source of information either. Regardless, my son and his wife gathered information from neighbors and a NH based Christmas tree farm consultant. Eventually, they decided they would open the farm for business this Christmas the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. They would often be told by community folk they were very happy to hear that my son and his wife were going to continue operation of the farm. Friends of my son and his wife along my other son Josh ran the farm sale and their help was pivotal/essential. One of their friends provided complimentary cookies and hot chocolate for the customers. One of the neighbors, who purportedly did most of the selling along with another neighbor in years prior donated a tree shaker and baler to the business, so customers received complimentary tree shaking and baling. I mostly provided backup on the days the tree sale, hence my contributions were mostly prepping the farm for the sale. Jane and I pulled up dead trees, flush cut stumps from prior year's tree harvests, picked up fallen trees and limbs and hauled the results away. We helped make some crude decorative trees from scrap pallet wood. It wasn't needed for the sale but we also spent days chipping wood from a huge brush pile left by the previous owners. All in all, a little over 200 tress were sold during the two days the farm was officially open. Even after officially closing for the season after the two day sale, customers would show up and campaign hard to be able to cut their tree. If you want, the farm, Z's Trees, has a Facebook page you can visit. Bike rides during my time working on the farm were to the nearby state park named Bear Brook and back. It was only about 12.5 miles total per ride but was plenty of a workout due to the hill climbing.
On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, November 29th we decided to head south. Our first stop was a visit with our daughter's family in Richmond, VA. We arrived there on the 30th and left there December 6th. My daughter had returned to work the week of Thanksgiving after 12 weeks of maternity leave. So the family was right in the midst of adapting to two working parents and two little ones in day care. Thankfully it appeared as though the timing of our visit was fortunate and we were able to help out with adjustment. In our prior visit this past summer, my two year old grandson was much more comfortable with his nana than me. Who can blame him? Regardless, on this visit, my grandson was much more comfortable with me and his companionship meant a lot. Helping out was physically less strenuous than the work we did at our sons.
We had our sights set on a visit to Ellijay GA for about a week starting December 15th. We are planning on meeting at my brother-in-law's vacation home there with his family and other in-laws. I picked a campground in northeast GA for our stay until the 15th. The campground is called Sarah's Creek and it is located in the Chattahoochee National Forest (https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/conf/recarea/?recid=10497). Like most trips to campgrounds we visit the last leg of the journey to reach them is a ride up a winding mountain rode which I can confirm are not welcome by my wife. This one caused here a class 5 panic. At one point I considered turning around to which she replied we were almost there and to continue on our way. Based on her status during the winding hill climb to the campground, I can attest that she would pass a chemical cardio stress test with flying colors. Here is a picture of the view going into one of the many turns.
The picture doesn't really do the situation justice. The feeling reminds me of the climbing portion of a roller coaster ride just before you go over the top and start a big descent. You can't see past the top and you just have to convince yourself there will be track, or in this case road, once you get over the top.
The campground has 22 sites. There are two large sets of campsites, one of 5 sites and the other of seven sites. These two sets of sites are spaced about 0.8 miles apart with 8 sites spread over that distance. Lastly there are two sites past the set of seven so that the distance from the first to last site is about a mile. Also, to reach the set of seven requires you to drive across Sarah's Creek with no bridge (that creek crossing is shown below). Jane and I were satisfied walking across the crossing on rocks one day and by myself biking across one day.
Here is the camper at the campground.
Cell service was virtually nonexistent so we used our Starlink service. You can see the Starlink terminal in front of the camper in one of the pictures. Most of the campsites were right along the creek banks. One of the pictures shows our campsites view, the one where you see the camper's landing. There were some nice small waterfalls near two other sites. We stayed at site 2 and behind site 1 was this waterfall.
Behind another site was this waterfall. I took the picture shown below after the waterfall from the waterfall towards the neighboring campsite to gauge the distance to the waterfall from the campsite. The person in the picture is standing at the site.
Site 2 was at the front of the campground and was one in the set of 5. Except for one night, we had that part of the campground all to ourselves. Even on the weekend we were there, there were at most 4 other campers in the whole campground besides us. An advantage to sites in one of the two sets is that the vault/pit toilet was in close proximity. The picture below was taken from the toilet toward our camper.
One of the draws of the campground is large vehicle, jeep like off roading on the forest roads. I used these roads for my biking. They were plenty challenging for me without the hazards of roots or obstructing rocks. With the creek and the forest road, the campground has a lot to offer. Unfortunately, during our stay we only had about one day of partial sunshine, two days of clouds and the rest rain. So after four days of using Starlink, which is a bit of an energy hog, we ran out of battery charge. This happened even though we shut down Starlink at night since we were aware of the energy usage. If it weren't for the almost complete lack of sunshine, I think we wouldn't have had an energy crunch. So the poor weather was a double whammy in that we didn't get out much and then when we were inside we couldn't entertain ourselves on the internet. Jane did some hand sewing which was beneficial.
I have run into cemeteries in other national forests such as Apalachicola which seems interesting/peculiar to me, but maybe it just reflects a human presence in these lands before they became national forests and public land. However, the tombstone behind site 22 shown below has a death year of 1976 which according to the hiker I encountered was after the forest became public land. The bottom of that tombstone has the inscription "he loved to hunt."
Anyway, the cemetery in the Chattahoochee was called the Kell cemetery, which matches the name on the tombstone, and I wonder how the Kell family lived off the land. For the most part it is very mountainous other than around the creek. Maybe some farming in the relatively flat creek valley and hunting as well as fishing provided sustenance back in the early 1800's.
I don't know if we will ever come back to this campground due to the drive to reach it and the weather's restricting our opportunity to enjoy it much. If we do consider coming back, we should at least check the weather forecast for more sunny weather. For now, our next stop will be a pre-Christmas visit with family in Ellijay GA until Christmas eve eve.
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