Retreat at Cloudland Canyon in North West GA by, Josh Winters

About 20 Misfit Adventure Seekers spent the long holiday weekend at Cloudland Canyon State Park in Rising Fawn GA exploring the trails and taking in the fall leaves across the northwest GA mountains. It started out with Check In to our lovely State Park lodge outfitted with 20 bunk beds. A hot meal warm drinks and a blazing campfire.  Everyone got settled in quickly and enjoyed an evening of comradery.  Saturday morning we started early with a 6:30am run.  I was lucky enough to spend it running with Chandler and as the sun was coming up we saw no less than 6 deer in the 30 minutes we were out there.

After the run, we had a short yoga/stretching session and breakfast to start our day.  We then packed our brown bag lunches and set off on a 5-hour backcountry hike.  It was a great hike with a steep descent into the bottom of the canyon of course followed by a steep climb back out.  We set an easy pace. Stopped often to look at the scenery and take pictures.  We at lunch on a ridge overlooking the canyon from the opposite side that we started on. 

After the hike, we carpooled into Chattanooga where we spilt up for a bit to do some shopping and all ended up at the same BBQ place for dinner. We made it back to the cabin in time to get the UGA Football game on the projector and lounged around for the rest of the evening.  Sunday morning started out a little later with Breakfast at 8am followed by a talk on endurance training.  Then we hit the trails again. This time in two groups one running and one hiking.  We finished up in time for yoga in the warm sun, lunch, and another talk this time on nutrition for athletes. After some recovery, we hit the 600 Stairs down to the fall for a little challenge to see who would be crowned stair climbing champ of 2019.  The honors went to Chandler and Jody.    After the stairs we had group dinner and spent the night sitting around the bonfire sipping on drinks and sharing stories.