This is it! The last of the 63 Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites we visited since we moved to Georgia last year. The first thing we did at Mistletoe State Park was renew our annual pass. In fact, we went one better and got a family membership with the Friends of Georgia State Parks. A membership includes 2 annual passes to parks, free admission to all historic sites for up to 6 people, 2 free nights of camping, and 2 tickets on the SAM Shortline Railway (something I’m really looking forward to taking Trey on).

Mistletoe is located on a peninsula extending into the massive Clarks Hill Lake and has a great beach area that Trey really enjoyed. The park was packed since it was the 4th of July and one nice lady let Trey borrow a float.

After swimming for a while we headed over to a nature trail that follows a small canyon created by wash-off from poor farming practices in the early 1900s (like Providence Canyon). After the hike we treated our sweaty boy to a bucket of ice cream from the visitor center. He deserved it after trekking all over our great state!

I’m assuming that most folks, like me, have never heard of Elijah Clark. He was a Georgian war hero in our nation’s Revolutionary War for independence. In fact, the character played by Mel Gibson in the film The Patriot, was loosely based on Elijah Clark (so, so sorry Elijah).

The Georgia State Park named after him sits on the 2nd largest man-made lake east of the Mississippi – Lake Clarks Hill, which is known as Lake Strom Thurmond every where but Georgia. Apparently in 1987, a South Carolina representative had a bill passed in Congress to rename Lake Clarks Hill after their long-serving Senator Thurmond. Georgians were quite upset (and rightfully so) but failed to pass a bill renaming back to Clarks Hill at the federal level. Instead, in 1989, the State of Georgia legislature named the dam and reservoir Clarks Hill again but their authority only extends to all Georgia state maps.

At the park, they have a great recreated log cabin museum of his frontier home from the 1780s. We visited on the 4th of July and there was a volunteer re-enactor present. She gave us a tour of the cabin and gave Trey a little wooden gun to play with. I must say, that thanks to Georgia’s State Parks my son now has gun fever. “Kaboom! Kaboom!” was all we heard for the rest of the trip.

After touring the cabins, we hiked a 3/4 mile nature trail through the woods and saw some incredible spider webs (of course Trey “kaboomed” them all). At the end of the hike, just before getting back in the car I found a very impressive rhino beetle. Normally, Trey loves holding bugs but this critter’s horns and size were a bit too much and he opted to let Daddy do all the bug handling.

Bobby Brown State Park is located on Clarks Hill Lake (also known as Lake Strom Thurman, but more on that in my next park post) and is a popular spot for camping and fishing. We hiked a nature trail that went across a cool swinging bridge and around a cove. On the walk we saw a huge water moccasin but I didn’t have my zoom lens to get a cool shot (shame on me!).

After hiking we cooled off in the lake and Trey had  a great time watching other families bring their boats & jet skis in and out of the water at the boat ramp (I really think he wanted to ride on one of those jet skis).

I spent a ridiculous amount of time photographing a spider that had a web on a reed in the water 20 feet from shore (how did he get out there?!). I’m very thankful for a patient and understanding wife who lets me obsess over things like that. I think it was worth it because I got a cool set of images from it.

This park has been another victim of our current economic crisis. Like Hart State Park, it was recently changed to a State Outdoor Recreation Area. I hope that in a couple years, the park service is able to re-open these parks.

This park was a great surprise – we hadn’t planned on visiting it on the day we did. We were driving back home from Richard B. Russell State Park and I suddenly saw a sign that said Watson Mill Bridge was just a few miles away. So we turned off the highway and a short while later we were cooling off in the water of the South Fork River.

The bridge is Georgia’s longest covered bridge and was built in 1885 by the son of a freed slave. It is remarkable to see that a bridge built so long ago using wooden pins still holds up under the modern day vehicles that drive over it.

The park boasts of several miles worth of trails, but once Trey saw that we could go on the rocks and enjoy the water any thoughts of hiking were over. After walking across the bridge and exploring the river’s banks for a while, I had to give in and let Trey swim. We didn’t have our river shoes so we had to be extra careful on the slippery rocks. I took Trey up to the waterfall under the bridge but he was not a fan of the spray. Don’t know what his issue is with that – for the same reason we can never give him showers, only baths.

Click the image below to open a panoramic image in a new window:

Richard B. Russell Jr. was a popular guy – not only did he serve as governor of Georgia from 1931-33, but he was a US Senator for almost 40 years. After his death he had all sorts of buildings, a road, a lake, a dam, an airport, a submarine, and yes, a state park named after him. That’s quite a legacy!

This state park’s main attraction is its 18-hole championship golf course, but you can guess that wasn’t what Trey and I were particularly interested in. We spent all of our time on a playground near the banks of the lake and had a picnic lunch on the shore.

The park boasts that it has one of the oldest steel pin bridges in the area but when we went to see it, the trail leading to it was closed.  Just as well I guess since Trey was already pretty exhausted from climbing on the playground and running around on the beach.