I have not talked much about my pup..but here is a picture of my old girl Bella:
She is an awesome dog, but she is up there in years. In that picture she is about 9 or 10 and she is now between 11 and 13. You wouldn’t really know it as she hasn’t really slowed up at all! Anyway, since all this outdoor travel excitement began, I have not really been able to take her many places for travel because of her sister. Sadie was the most sweet, but mischievous hell raising beagle you would have ever known! I loved her to death and she just passed in September of 2020 at nearly 15 years old. Unfortunately, there was almost no time in her life when she would not cause chaos, and when that started to… lessen? she developed an incontinence problem, so she never got to travel much. She did make a road trip to Indiana once when she was a puppy, and when on some short ones in Florida. And she go to go lots of places around town, just not much in the big overnighter type trips.
Anyway, Sadie Lou passed away and I vowed that Bella was going to get to go on some trips. My friend Nicki, the Sidekick, and I were looking at possibilities in Georgia. Clayton is always a strong favorite of mine, but it’s a ten hour drive and Bella has never done more than an hour in a car, so it was good that we decided on a place in western Georgia called Providence Canyon. Nicki has an older crippled dog herself (Charlie), and a new rescue (Tiger Lily) who is quite the handful like my old girl Sadie, and she was wanting to do this trip with all the pups. Providence Canyon is this rather interesting man-made feature a little south of Columbus, GA and about 6 hours or so away from home. A fun addition to this story was that a hurricane was approaching. Nicki and her dogs left earlier in the day. I had to finish up at work and left a little later and had to drive through a few nasty moments but soon enough made it through the bands of Eta and the crazy beast in the back seat and got up to Columbus.
Our AirBnb was on the Chattahoochee which runs through town so we got some easy city river walks in at times. We went down to the canyon a couple times: once with all three dogs to do some easy hiking around the Perimeter Loop and then again with Nicki’s new dog Tiger Lily and Bella to hike down inside the canyon on the Inner Loop. As I mentioned earlier, this is actually a man made canyon. I do not know all the particulars, but back in the 1800s, poor farming techniques created some bad erosion in the fields the farmers were working, and due to the soil in the area those cracks and fissures open up more and more and more and you have what it is now.
The hike is pretty easy, even for the dogs. The descent is a little steep and then, if you do the loop all the way around, the slope back up is more gradual. The colors of the earth here are very pretty…and we were catching the tail end of the foliage season in the area. Despite being out in the middle of nowhere it did get busy a bit!
Providence canyon is a super neat and random, unexpected treat on the GA/AL border. It is definitely a cool place to stop by and do some leisurely hiking. If you are into boating there is another state park just a few miles down the road called Florence Marina which is also on the Chattahoochee River. There is not a whole lot in the way of services around here, though. Columbus is about 45 minutes or so away, and that’s about it. There is a little town nearby called Omaha, which does have a large open air brewery, the Omaha Brewing Company, and it is definitely close enough to bring lunch and get a beer, but you’ll need to pack lunch for this trip. I also want to point out one other spot we checked out in Columbus: a brew pub called Chattabrewchee Southern Brewhouse. The beer was pretty decent, it had a nice outdoor space, and their logo is an opossum. There is a magnet on my car of their logo now!
Overall impressions: Pros: Beautiful state park. Nice weekend getaway. Good spot to take dogs or young ones. Cons: Not too much nearby, and Columbus is ok, but not what I would call a touristy draw. They do have some whitewater rafting through the city, and that might be something that would also draw me back, but that’s about it.
The Adventurer Final Word:
4 Stars! Perfect for an extended weekend hiking or get away from the city type of trip.
The Parks Adventurer 