Georgia - Chattahoochie River National Recreation Area

While on my road trip to the south eastern states, I needed to visit a National Park Property in Georgia. Since I was in the Atlanta area, I went to all three of the locations in one day. First, I visited the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield, followed by the Island Ford section of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation area, and lastly, the Martin Luther King National Historic Park.

In National Park Service lingo, a National Recreation Area seems to mean that there are a bunch of individual sites, all connected by one common thing (in this case, the Chattahoochee River). I decided to visit the Island Ford site, since there is a Visitor Center there, and I was hoping to get more information about the Chattahoochee. Unfortunately, the visitor center, while technically open, had limited services due to COVID-19. I pretty much only got a passport stamp and a map there.

The grounds were wooded, and nice, with hiking paths running throughout. I took one of the paths down to the river. There, I found that the NPS also has made a Water route, and has built places to easily park and get in and out of kayaks and canoes. This is a great idea, and maybe someday I’ll come back and do a stretch of the water route.

As with a lot of the south, this location was visited during the time of the Civil War, and was a place to cross the river. There is a lot of history in the south, not all of it nice to hear, but I believe it’s important to understand.