strouds run

it seemed like it would never end when this afternoon we hiked around strouds run, athens' closest lake. you can either read the text below or go to the photo slide show with music right away!


strouds run is man-made with the help of a dam (right lower corner in the map) and also known as dow lake. by hiking the seven miles around the water, we could see how strouds run (upper end of map) and dow lake (middle and lower end in map) connect. it took us four hours, two soggy jackets, and two pairs of muddy shoes to complete the lake view trail, which is quite deceiving. from time to time we could see the dam but whenever we thought we were coming close yet another "finger" of the lake showed up that we had to go around.

in addition, after a couple of hours it started to rain which made the already wet path even muddier. but the rain drops also cleared the air for some nice pictures. so we stopped every few feet to take yet another photo of a plant, a stump or the landscape as you can see in this slide show.