The Wise Woman and I spent three days at Cloudland Canyon, on the west side of Lookout Mountain in northwest Georgia. We camped on the West Rim and hiked down to Daniel Creek.
The canyon is 1,000 feet deep in places and was turned into a state park by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. It was once owned by the Sitton family and was called Sitton Gulch. But the clouds that hug the mountains routinely drop into the canyon. We saw the fog and can see why people call the place “Cloudland.”
The place was once the floor of an ancient sea. It got its shape 200 million years ago when old continents collided and pulled apart, creating the Cumberlands and Appalachians.
The rim, once the ocean’s floor, is a hard sandstone. Beneath it are layers of softer shale. The layers can be seen clearly as you hike down the canyon. Water that seeps into the ground erodes the softer rock, creating caves and sending boulders sliding toward the creek.
It’s wild, rugged, beautiful country. The older I get, the more I seem to need to see places like this.
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