Sweetwater Creek (Douglas County, Georgia)

 Sweetwater Creek State Park is one of my favorite parks in the Atlanta area. The wide creek and historical ruins always make for an interesting hiking destination. I had signed up to do this hike with the Meetup group several weeks ago, but with the heavy rains the Atlanta area has received over the last week, I thought it make the hike even more of an adventure. I was right.

After doing our normal round of introductions, we hit the trail and headed east from the parking area. Unfortunately, the large foot bridge that crosses the creek and leads to the northern section of the park is under construction and we're unable to cross. This forces us to double-back a ways and head south alongside the raging brown waters of the creek.

I can honestly say that I've never seen this creek flowing with this much fury. There is so much water traversing over the shallow rock formations that it makes for something like a class 4 rapid right now. We pass by the ruins of the old Manchester Mill and continue along the trails. In places the waters are almost washing out the trail, but with a fair amount of rock scrambling and sinking our feet in the mud, we're able to continue along the southern loop trail Some of the vistas are fantastic

All along the way, I enjoy great conversations with the other hikers as I always do with this group. Eventually, we reach a point where one of the feeder creeks has washed out the trail and we're forced to turn back. No matter, this park has many miles of trails and we quickly adjust our plans and continue on. 

Finally returning to the parking area, we've put in about 7.6 miles and will call it a day at this point. The views of the raging waters made this truly a fantastic hike and I'm really glad I decided to join the group for it.