Hiking Tallulah Gorge with Dogs

Rocco finds his favorite resting place -- where else, a rock!

Last weekend we sent out on a beautiful day with our pals Johann, Gracie and their mum to hike a couple of picturesque trails in the northeast corner of Georgia. 

These were pretty easy trails and not too taxing on pups or humans. But our goal was more about finding some beautiful waterfalls and taking in the scenery. 

It was a day to recharge for our upcoming agility trials!

We covered two different areas so today we'll show you what we found at Tallulah Gorge State Park, and next week we'll show you what we discovered at Minnehaha Falls.

Gracie, Johann and Rocco head down the steps on the North Rim Trail

For safety reasons, leashed pets are allowed on the two rim trails but not on the gorge floor or on any trail accessing the gorge. We headed out on the North Rim Trail and found plenty of interesting sites and a few surprises!

The North Rim Trail is about 1.5 miles and has five scenic overlooks including this one at the top of  Tempesta Falls.  Look and listen!


From here, you can access the Hurricane Falls Loop Trail that takes you to the gorge floor via a staircase of 1,099 steps! Dogs aren't allowed on that trail so we stopped at the top and took a few more photos.

Rocco and I watched Gracie and Johann while their mum took photos of the gorge.

We headed on to the next overlook and found another surprise!

What is that big metal structure behind Rocco?

Wow! We thought that was pretty cool, so we investigated a bit further.

We found this cable attached to one end of the tower, and we think this may be the cable that Karl Wallenda walked across. Eeks! My feet are pretty small and they seem huge next to this cable!

This is the gorge that he traversed. Yikes! That's a long way down. The depth of the gorge at this point is 750 feet. 

After thoroughly investigating the tower and imaging what it was like to tightrope across the gorge, we headed back the way we came.

Rocco says, "hmm, wonder who was here? sniff, sniff."

And lo and behold yet another surprise! Rocco and his pals stumbled across what appears to be a crime scene. Rocco gets busy doing his detective work.

We didn't solve the crime, but we did have a lovely walk through the North Rim Trail. We'll need to come back another day to do the South Rim. 

Next, it was time to head to another location to check out another waterfall that Johann's mum knew about. So we jumped in the car and headed down the road.

Uh oh, there was a stream going across the road.  Mountain streams can be deceiving, so we weren't sure how deep it really was. 

What do you think? Do you think our car sank in or we made it across safely? We'll tell you what happened when we crossed the stream next week!


The fun and games continue every Friday with FitDog Friday, the weekly Blog Hop brought to you by To Dog With Love, SlimDoggy and Peggy's Pet Place to promote a healthy active lifestyle for pets (and their people, too!). Join in every Friday by linking up your FitDog story or visiting the blogs in the Hop.