Etowah River || Boling Park to Field's Landing

Slowly, a few miles every year, I'm chipping away at my goal to paddle the entire Etowah River. It's 164 miles long, and I'm 66 miles in right now. I suppose you could argue that it's the easier of the miles that've been paddled too, considering some 26 of those are the still, slow waters of Lake Allatoona. Regardless, it's a goal and an enjoyable one to work toward at that. A lot of those miles have been solo, a few with my wife Jeannie, and now that my brother(s) are around more, they're racking up a good bit faster.

This latest stretch was 10 miles from Boling Park to Field's Landing. This was the first bit of Etowah I've done upstream from the lake, and for the first 8 miles or so there was a nice current pushing along. It's all woodlands on both sides, and only a couple of houses peek through the trees along the way. Unlike the lower Etowah I'm used to, there were no riverside shacks or private boat launches dotting the banks. I haven't researched it lately, but it appears that a good span of that area is Allatoona WMA and then Georgia National Cemetery land, at least on the western side of the river. Anyway, the lack of development lends a slightly remote air to the trip, at least until you come into view of Highway 20.

This was a December paddle on a sunny, windy Monday, so there wasn't much in the way of wildlife happening, but we did run across a hunter packing out a deer. But beautiful skies, steady water, and an abundance of trees.