Silver Comet Trail: Cedartown, GA (Day 2)
This morning we managed to get going about 8:30. It was still pleasant and cool when we started out, but warm enough that we were able to wear short sleeved t-shirts. We started from the depot in downtown Cedartown, which is set up to look like a train station, with the trail running alongside the building under a covered area like a train platform.
Here's the mile marker at the depot in Cedartown. The mileage is 51.28.
You may notice some glare from the sun in some of the pictures -- we were riding east toward Rockmart, into the morning sun. Here's a map showing the segment we covered today. We started at the second bull's eye from the left, in Cedartown and rode east to the bull's eye in Rockmart at Elm Street.
There are lots of ponds and swampy areas along the trail. In places, culverts have been installed to let the water drain under the trail without flooding it. In other places, the water covers the trail when it gets high. Today, there was only one spot where there was a puddle that stretched almost all the way across the trail. Most of the trail was completely dry.
There are benches and picnic tables scattered along the trail as well, so there are plenty of places to stop for a while, have a snack, and rest in the shade. We had the trail to ourselves for the first couple of hours.
About 11 miles before Rockmart, we came upon the "Last Foot of Trail":
It was installed on August 29, 2008, according to the granite block set into the trail. Closer to Atlanta, we already passed the "First Foot of Trail", marked with a similar granite block, but I didn't get a picture of that.
Sometimes Karen got way ahead. See that little speck out in the distance?
Sometimes I caught up. There was a big mountain (it seemed big to us, anyway) a few miles outside Cedartown. Coming down the other side, we came across this spot in the trail where the cement has buckled and cracked. Someone rolling down the hill without paying good attention could hit that spot and launch themselves off the side of the hill. We carefully rode around it and carried on.
After the big mountain, the trail flattened out again and passed through farm fields and pastures. Someone got creative and decorated some of the fence posts along the trail. Can you see the ark at the top of this one?
I don't know if you can tell what it is, but this one has a house on top.
A few miles before we got to Rockmart, we started seeing other bikers on the trail. We saw quite a few other recumbent riders.
We rolled into Rockmart at about 10:30, right around two hours after we started. Here's the signpost marking our eastern-most point, where we turned around. The mileage is 37.66. This is the side you see headed east toward Atlanta.
And this is the side headed west toward Alabama, after we turned around.
Just across the foot bridge in the background was a nice, shady park where we stopped for a while, had some food, and rested. So while I was taking these pictures, Karen was chillin' in the park. I notice this marker set into a brick pavement near the trail to let everyone know they're in Rockmart.
The text is not clear in the picture, but it says, "Rockmart, Georgia. Rock market to the world. 1872." Rockmart's official website describes how Rockmart was founded in 1872 as the railroad depot for shipping out the area's "slate, limestone, iron shale, and clay," mined by Welsh miners who had settled nearby Van Wert in 1838.
About a hundred yards behind me as I was taking the picture of the Rockmart marker was Frankie's Italian Restaurant.
I had heard about Frankie's from other folks who have ridden the trail. It's a popular place to stop for refreshment. It turned out that they were opening at 11:00, so by the time I had asked someone and they had helped me figure out where it was, it was opening. We got their first two cups of coffee of the day, fresh brewed. Frankie's is very generous with their coffee. We got two large styrofoam cups full. Rejuvenated from the food and the first sips of coffee, we were ready to start our ride back toward Cedartown before the coffee was finished. So for the first mile or so, we were juggling coffee along with peddling and steering.
We left Rockmart about 11:30.
I thought this tree looked dramatic against the sky as I approached it, so I shot a picture. I think the finger detracts something from the composition. What do you think? Does the finger look dramatic?
In the next picture, off to the left of the trail is a farm. The gravel road into the farm crosses the Silver Comet and then crosses a creek on the farm property. There's an interesting covered bridge over the creek that I was trying to capture with this picture, but it was too far away to show well.
After one of the steep climbs on the way back to Cedartown, I stopped in the shade for a moment and noticed the electrical poles marching away into the wilderness.
We got back to Cedartown about 1:45. So Cedartown to Rockmart took about 2 hours and the return trip took about 15 minutes longer and we spent about an hour in Rockmart.
After resting in the shade of the Cedartown depot for 15 minutes or so, we pushed on to the Martin trailhead, about 1.6 miles west of the depot. That was our westernmost point. The mileage is 53.41.
Here's what I saw most of the day as I was riding:
Notice the lack of handlebars in the picture. I was riding my Vision with under-seat steering. Very relaxed and comfortable.
There was an interesting place where the trail made a loop and went under itself. I tried to capture that in the next couple of pictures, but I'm not satisfied with how they turned out.
This next picture is a shot of the bridge in the picture above just after having ridden under it. In the picture above, I rode across the bridge, went around the loop, then rode under the bridge. Then I stopped, turned around, and shot the following picture of the bridge I just ridden over, and then under.
From there, we rode back to the Cedartown depot, loaded up the bikes, and toddled back to the hotel for more food and a nap. Whew!
Our easternmost point for the day was at mileage 37.66 in Rockmart. Our westernmost was at mileage 53.41 at the Martin trailhead, so we covered 15.75 miles of the trail in each direction for a total round trip ride of 31.5 miles.
Stay tuned. Tomorrow we tackle the segment between Cedartown and the Georgia/Alabama state line. However, since we'll be checking out of the hotel first thing tomorrow, I won't have a chance to post about tomorrow's ride until we get back home to Oak Ridge tomorrow evening.
Here's the mile marker at the depot in Cedartown. The mileage is 51.28.
You may notice some glare from the sun in some of the pictures -- we were riding east toward Rockmart, into the morning sun. Here's a map showing the segment we covered today. We started at the second bull's eye from the left, in Cedartown and rode east to the bull's eye in Rockmart at Elm Street.
There are lots of ponds and swampy areas along the trail. In places, culverts have been installed to let the water drain under the trail without flooding it. In other places, the water covers the trail when it gets high. Today, there was only one spot where there was a puddle that stretched almost all the way across the trail. Most of the trail was completely dry.
There are benches and picnic tables scattered along the trail as well, so there are plenty of places to stop for a while, have a snack, and rest in the shade. We had the trail to ourselves for the first couple of hours.
About 11 miles before Rockmart, we came upon the "Last Foot of Trail":
It was installed on August 29, 2008, according to the granite block set into the trail. Closer to Atlanta, we already passed the "First Foot of Trail", marked with a similar granite block, but I didn't get a picture of that.
Sometimes Karen got way ahead. See that little speck out in the distance?
Sometimes I caught up. There was a big mountain (it seemed big to us, anyway) a few miles outside Cedartown. Coming down the other side, we came across this spot in the trail where the cement has buckled and cracked. Someone rolling down the hill without paying good attention could hit that spot and launch themselves off the side of the hill. We carefully rode around it and carried on.
After the big mountain, the trail flattened out again and passed through farm fields and pastures. Someone got creative and decorated some of the fence posts along the trail. Can you see the ark at the top of this one?
I don't know if you can tell what it is, but this one has a house on top.
A few miles before we got to Rockmart, we started seeing other bikers on the trail. We saw quite a few other recumbent riders.
We rolled into Rockmart at about 10:30, right around two hours after we started. Here's the signpost marking our eastern-most point, where we turned around. The mileage is 37.66. This is the side you see headed east toward Atlanta.
And this is the side headed west toward Alabama, after we turned around.
Just across the foot bridge in the background was a nice, shady park where we stopped for a while, had some food, and rested. So while I was taking these pictures, Karen was chillin' in the park. I notice this marker set into a brick pavement near the trail to let everyone know they're in Rockmart.
The text is not clear in the picture, but it says, "Rockmart, Georgia. Rock market to the world. 1872." Rockmart's official website describes how Rockmart was founded in 1872 as the railroad depot for shipping out the area's "slate, limestone, iron shale, and clay," mined by Welsh miners who had settled nearby Van Wert in 1838.
About a hundred yards behind me as I was taking the picture of the Rockmart marker was Frankie's Italian Restaurant.
I had heard about Frankie's from other folks who have ridden the trail. It's a popular place to stop for refreshment. It turned out that they were opening at 11:00, so by the time I had asked someone and they had helped me figure out where it was, it was opening. We got their first two cups of coffee of the day, fresh brewed. Frankie's is very generous with their coffee. We got two large styrofoam cups full. Rejuvenated from the food and the first sips of coffee, we were ready to start our ride back toward Cedartown before the coffee was finished. So for the first mile or so, we were juggling coffee along with peddling and steering.
We left Rockmart about 11:30.
I thought this tree looked dramatic against the sky as I approached it, so I shot a picture. I think the finger detracts something from the composition. What do you think? Does the finger look dramatic?
In the next picture, off to the left of the trail is a farm. The gravel road into the farm crosses the Silver Comet and then crosses a creek on the farm property. There's an interesting covered bridge over the creek that I was trying to capture with this picture, but it was too far away to show well.
After one of the steep climbs on the way back to Cedartown, I stopped in the shade for a moment and noticed the electrical poles marching away into the wilderness.
We got back to Cedartown about 1:45. So Cedartown to Rockmart took about 2 hours and the return trip took about 15 minutes longer and we spent about an hour in Rockmart.
After resting in the shade of the Cedartown depot for 15 minutes or so, we pushed on to the Martin trailhead, about 1.6 miles west of the depot. That was our westernmost point. The mileage is 53.41.
Here's what I saw most of the day as I was riding:
Notice the lack of handlebars in the picture. I was riding my Vision with under-seat steering. Very relaxed and comfortable.
There was an interesting place where the trail made a loop and went under itself. I tried to capture that in the next couple of pictures, but I'm not satisfied with how they turned out.
This next picture is a shot of the bridge in the picture above just after having ridden under it. In the picture above, I rode across the bridge, went around the loop, then rode under the bridge. Then I stopped, turned around, and shot the following picture of the bridge I just ridden over, and then under.
From there, we rode back to the Cedartown depot, loaded up the bikes, and toddled back to the hotel for more food and a nap. Whew!
Our easternmost point for the day was at mileage 37.66 in Rockmart. Our westernmost was at mileage 53.41 at the Martin trailhead, so we covered 15.75 miles of the trail in each direction for a total round trip ride of 31.5 miles.
Stay tuned. Tomorrow we tackle the segment between Cedartown and the Georgia/Alabama state line. However, since we'll be checking out of the hotel first thing tomorrow, I won't have a chance to post about tomorrow's ride until we get back home to Oak Ridge tomorrow evening.
Labels: 2009, SilverComet
posted by GreenSkink at 12:36 PM
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