Yesterday, after a week of sub-freezing lows and cold days, we ventured out to a monitoring paddle on Womack Creek, Tate’s Hell.    Kayaks unloaded at the landing, we discovered we left our camera at home — 63 miles away.    Our reports are mainly photographs of changes on the creek — no camera, no report. We chose to return home to try again today.   The weather report predicted a slight chance of rain, but overcast skies.   This was OK.

Today,  we left home one hour later. Had we left at the same time as yesterday, we would have been driving in thick fog.  The fog lifted, we had sufficiently visibility, but, approaching the Franklin county line, the windshield showed droplets of light mist, which increased to minor drizzle.  The temperature was in the 60’s, not enough to cause hypothermia, but these drizzly rains can really soak into you on the creek, so we decided to check out two nearby campgrounds which we hadn’t seen for over a year instead of waiting out the rain.   Both are nice camping spots on the Crooked River.

When we returned to Womack Creek landing, this is what we saw.  It was still raining; we chose not to spend the next 3-4 hours up the creek and drove home again.

Potential campers and paddlers, however, may want to see  what Womack Creek Campground looks like.

This is the day use area with a covered picnic area and 2 grills and full service restrooms.  Water is not potable — bring your own.  

When camping, this very wide veranda in the restroom building is a great place to rock and enjoy the Ochlockonee River.  

It’ll be a  matter of time before the whole restroom building is going into the river.  Camp hosts have mentioned this situation to management, but little seems to have been done to correct the erosion.   It is now closing in up  to the dripline of the  roof.

Mark, the host, keeps the restrooms very fresh & clean and uses his own money to pay for soap, hanging plants and homey touches to the restroom.  This is the women’s restroom with 2 toilet stalls and one shower stall.

The freeze the week before left bronzed fern plants at the landing.

Silvering, a common shrub along the creek which blooms after the vining aster and at the same time as Simmon’s aster was very late in blooming this year.   Along Rock Landing Road in Tate’s Hell, they were not deterred by the freeze and were blooming — hedgelike rows of them.

No bees on them, which one would normally see, but in the grasses below — sheet spider webs.   

Spider webs were everywhere:  the customary orb shaped, the balled up confusion-shaped on branches of trees and these every-which-away sheet nests on the ground catch dew which, even in the light of a cloudy sky, calls attention to them.

Even on a overcast, drizzly day, the forest gives back visually.