Lake Hartwell

BIRTH OF THE BABOON Map
From Lake Hartwell

Please indulge me for a minute while I take the moment of my anniversary to tell you the story of my first adventure. Sure its not as dramatic as some of the others you’ve seen, but its important. It paved the way for the entire direction of this site.

Once upon a time there was a man. He was doing nothing special, working at a bank and bored with life. It was the fall of 2006 and he had the urge to get out of town. All the other folks who had the same urge were going up to Helen, Georgia. But that drove the hotel prices up, and his frugal nature thought something else might be in order. He looked at a map for cities about two hours or less away from the great city of Atlanta. He settled, for some unknown reason, on the city of Hartwell, Georgia.

He convinced his girlfriend and frequent traveling companion that Hartwell was the place to go, for no particular reason. And with no more information than a hotel reservation, they packed up their car and headed Northwest. When they arrived, they went downtown to find something to eat.

What they found was a pretty and quaint downtown area, known as Depot Street, built decades before and lacking the crowds that Atlanta always had. They found a cute little restaurant called the Downtown Cafe. They asked the waitress if she liked living in Hartwell. She replied that she loved it. They asked what there was to do in Hartwell. She suggested that the park by the dam might make a nice place to go. And so they went the next day.

They drove out to the park and encountered a road marker that informed them that they had arrived at the Center of the World, at least according to Cherokee Legend. They walked a mile and half out to the dam. They gazed at the beautiful waters of Lake Hartwell. They found a nice place to have a picnic. While eating they were befriended by a dozen or so friendly migrating ducks. They had a very enjoyable time, picnicking in the park and feeding the ducks.

That was 18 months ago and dozens of new adventures have been taken since. The man upgraded his camera (These photos are taken by a rather ordinary mechanism). The man lost about 30 pounds due to his rise in activity. The man taught himself a little html started the page you are reading right now. The Urban Baboon was born. The man is not quite so bored anymore

The Moral of the story is this. Every place has people in it who love it, it is our task to find out why that is. Every place has something that makes it unique, it is our task to discover what that is. That is the lesson of Lake Hartwell, Georgia. That is the essence of the Urban Baboon.

1 comment:

  1. As a retiree fed up with Gwinnett County (2014),a family member needed help. We are staying right across the street from this special lady and have discovered that life in a small town is what living in a town is supposed to be: neighbors helping neighbors, passers by waving, people smiling, conversation with strangers while shopping... I had forgotten the southern charm that Atlanta offered sixty some years ago, it is alive and well in Hartwell. Thank you for discovering this little gem in the south and creating this post to share.

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