Not All Who Wander Are Lost

We, however, often are.  Not just lost, really lost.

We took on a new task here at J. Strom Thurmond COE.  Around the lake, on private property many people have built nice summer homes.  And what make the homes even nicer is they have access to Thurmond Lake.  Many of the home owners have constructed boat docks on COE owned shoreline property, after obtaining a lease from the COE.  Requirements are to first obtain a permit, have the design approved, then after approval and construction, an annual payment is required for the lease.  The only other requirement is to keep the boat dock in good condition.

To ensure the docks are in good condition, the COE does annual inspections and takes pictures of the boat docks.

This looked like a great way to spend the day doing important work for the COE.  We obtained a list of docks to inspect along with some Google Earth pictures supplied by the ranger overseeing this project.  Off we went to the Georgia side of the lake.

Sounds simple, right?  Knowing we’re involved, nothing ever goes too simply for us.

After locating one address that was locked tight with a sign posted with large letters “Beware of Dog”, we decided to move on to the next location.

One thing we’ve found here in the wilds of Georgia, streets and properties are not all that easy to find, even with a GPS.  We looked for another address and finally decided we were there looking at the Google Earth pictures and comparing them to the roofs of houses.

Off we set to walk down to the property owner’s boat dock.  It seemed strange since it looked pretty heavily wooded, but there was a gate.

After walking into the woods for about 15 minutes, all we found were even more woods…and no lake.

Hmm, this doesn’t look like the Google Earth picture.

Another reason why I like working with Marti is she is so tech savvy (unlike me) and whipped out her iPhone and called up Google Earth.  Fortunately we had a good signal.

Comparing our location to the Google Earth picture we had been given, we found we had gone exactly in the opposite direction of the lake.  Duoh!

Now we were back on track, we walked back out of the dense woods and found the house we were looking for.

Walking around to the back yard, we saw victory was in our grasp.

We walked down to the dock and I took several pictures.

We had four more docks to inspect and photograph.  Thankfully, these were much easier to find and the pathways were very clear.  One crossed a deep ravine and the owners had constructed a bridge across it.  Marti was especially glad of that.

We were glad to finish the job, even though we did wander lost in the Georgia woods for a while.  Why do I get so concerned about the Georgia woods?  Well, recently at a Georgia Visitors Center, I saw this sign:

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