Rod and the Girls to Sweetwater Park

Darla's trip for the conference gave us a visit with the girls. After all the storms had passed through, we had a beautiful cool morning and Rod was finished with the term. So he and the girls headed for Sweetwater Park.

They head down the trail toward Manchester Mill and soon get to Sweetwater Creek.

Their first discovery was a colorful inchworm, then a frog in a shallow side creek. The mountain laurel was in bloom, so the woods were beautiful.

After watching a duck cruise by on the current, they ran down to a rock outcropping and climbed to the top, about 10 feet up.

Jordan liked the fact that the mountain laurel buds would pop open if you squeezed them.

We followed the main trail past the first set of wide shoals and then branched off where the narrow millrace separates from the main stream.

Jordan and Elyse were interested in the shallow millrace stream when they realized that with their crocs on they could wade in it. The waded all the way down to the mill end of it. There were places where part of its old rock walls were still present.

Ashleigh was staying out of the water because she had her tennis shoes on, but with the beautiful side stream, she couldn't stand it any longer and pulled off her shoes to wade in the stream.

We made it to the old factory, Manchester Mill. The ruins of this Civil War era factory are now surrounded by trees. We caught part of a guided tour where the guide was telling them that the factory was manned by women and children at the time of the raid by Sherman's troops. The workers were put on a train up through Tennessee to Kentucky. He noted that another such mill at Roswell was rebuilt and formed the nucleus for the present town of Roswell, GA.

He described how cotton was processed through stages to finally make cloth here in this water-powered mill.

We continued on downstream from the factory where there was lots of rushing water over the shallow rock shoals.

The beautiful stream was a great place to explore. We just took our time, and there were lots of interesting places for the girls to explore.

Sometimes their exploration of the rocks and the creek reminded me of a little pack of raccoons!

As we continued on downstream, the separate streams converged and the rapids became more violent. We had to stick to the shore trail, and in places it was pretty rocky and steep.

We did have to stop and observe this clump of swallowtail butterflies on the creek bank. Our understanding is that they gather like this to take in some particular minerals from the sand.

This one posed nicely for me on a leaf.

We say goodbye to the shoals of Sweetwater Creek and the Sweetwater Creek State Park and look forward to our next visit.