Panola Mountain/Walking Gorilla

 A different trail for us! Panola Mountain is just a few miles from Arabia Mountain.   There was a golf course beside this lake and it has now been turned into a nature trail which circles around Lake Alexander and then continues down to the South River which is at the base of Panola Mountain.  You can't really see Panola Mountain from this side, since it is heavily covered with trees.  We walked this trail on Thursday afternoon as soon as I got off work.  If you notice the fish on the sign above, you will notice the same "fishy" sign at the end of our warm afternoon walk.  Let's go!

"Happy Trails to you, until we meet again". I love that this sign is at the beginning of the trail!

We sat  here and had our coffee  overlooking the South River, this was an important waterway for the Native Americans in this area.  Once again, if there is a place in this country that the Indians liked, then there is a a very good chance that is a place that I want to visit.  I would like to see this in the Spring.  On this walk, we saw two deer, a bluebird, a downy woodpecker, several squirrels and sad to say, two dead creatures... a possum and a hawk...that is nature, I suppose.

There were so many different trees on this walk.  I would like to have a book about trees and come back on this walk and try to identify as many as I can...

It really was a beautiful day, this was a field which just looked so tempting that I had to take a photo through the fencing... it reminded me of "The Wizard of Oz", the grass was so green, it didn't look real!  Normally, the grass in the winter just goes brown... and look at that blue sky!

Panola Mountain also has all the passenger jets flying over to the Atlanta airport!

We thought we had enough time to get around this lake but the lake was bigger than we thought...are we going to make it back to our car before dark?

You can always count on Richard to take a good photo of the sun setting.

"Son, look at this tree, go over there and let Richard take  a funny elbow picture of you".  I love it when people do what I tell them to do!

There!  We made it!   The lake was pretty and I can see that the trail will  be really nice in the Spring and Summer...but I really love the walks over Arabia, so we think we will leave this trail for others to enjoy!
So thankful that we were able to get this walk in, we think that we walked for almost four miles! It was about 75 degrees on Thursday afternoon, but after the rain we had today...it is expected to be 33 degrees tomorrow morning!  That is what our weather is like in Georgia, you never know what to expect...pay attention to the forecast but hope for the best.  Kind of like life itself, isn't it?

And hey, I don't know what made me think of this gorilla walking upright but have you seen it?   It's a really amazing sight for me... we have a very nice area for gorillas at Zoo Atlanta, but I never once in all the years of observing them saw any of them stand up and walk like this one.  Fascinating to me...

And I wrote about Willie B., our famous gorilla who was born free but lived most of his life at the zoo in Atlanta, back on Nov. 2, 2011, if you would like to read it, here is the link to do so:    http://georgiagirlwithanenglishheart.blogspot.com/2011/11/willie-b-and-me.html