North Georgia waterfalls

May 26

It was a day I’ll never forget. Saturday afternoon my friend and I drove down dirt roads in the Chattahoochee National Forest and hiked trails to some of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen. This is something I have wanted to do for years. I am endlessly fascinated by waterfalls.

The majestic and thunderous falls of Niagra, Yellowstone, and Yosemite are awe-inspiring, but the smaller, more ethereally lovely falls that cascade down at steep angles off sheer rock faces are to me just as magnificent. They come from tiny creeks and tributary streams of the larger creeks and rivers, most of them, and fan out and descend in steady, rhythmic sheets of falling water. A constant, and to me, musical sound, is produced.

It takes a lot of effort to reach some of these falls. For instance, Horse Trough Falls was unattainable for us in a fruitless search for it Friday because the directions in the guidebook were so inadequate and incomplete. Frustration abounds when you know you are in the vicinity of a treasure you long to find and yet can’t find it. Finally, we had to return to the house.

But Saturday, we started out again with a better map and succeeded beyond all my expectations. Upper DeSoto Falls was reached via a hike of about 3/4 miles through a forest of hickories, oaks, pines and Eastern hemlock. The waterfall is actually a stepped series of falls over granite ledges, so in effect, it was like discovering four separate waterfalls. I couldn’t believe it. The top fall is a plume waterall which plummets about 15 feet into a small pool in the next ledge, and then it fans out, creating the impression of a lot of water when the source of all that water is really just a small creek only a few feet wide.

The road that finally led to Horse Trough Falls was a forest service road through a remote camping area of the national forest. We finally reached the Upper Chattahoochee River Campground, parked and walked a mere 200 feet to discover perhaps the finest waterfall of the day. I could have watched it for hours.

It was quite an experience, also, to be at the headwaters of Georgia’s mightiest river, the famed Chattahoochee, which flows past Atlanta on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

On the road up to the campground we saw a lot of campers with their tents and gear, lounging in chairs, relaxing, or fishing in the “Hooch,” as the river is called hereabouts. I kept imagining what it must be like to sleep out overnight in a tent, next to a musical stream in the middle of tall woods. What a great experience that would be, something I have not done since a couple of disastrous, rain-sodden camping misadventures during my very brief stint in the Boy Scouts when I was a kid.

We picked up pizza and sandwiches for dinner, and then went to the weekly Saturday night concert in the square in Hiwassiee which featured some local singers doing popular 50s song. The guy who sang the Dion songs was really quite good.

Afterwards, we talked until late out on the deck overlooking the mountain and a full moon, shining brightly beneath a tall hickory tree.

As I write this, I’m preparing to leave for Tennessee and back roads north and west of here.

It’s been a cool and quiet few minutes to relax beside the creek as I write and contemplate the day head, Day 5 of my vacation road trip.

Upper Helton Creek Falls and Lower Helton Creek Falls, the first two falls we saw Saturday.

DeSoto Falls

Another of the DeSoto Falls, and one more picture of DeSoto Falls

Horse Trough Falls

Joe and Monica Cook’s Chattahoochee River journey