Hometown Wanderlust is an adventurous, weekly blog featuring one girl’s experiences with food, music, shopping, biking and life in general around Dublin GA. This week, Dublin GA’s favorite redhead escapes to River Bend WMA.
Exploring Dublin GA
We see blogs and posts and magazine articles everyday encouraging us to discover this and explore that, here, there, and yonder.
Travel! Adventure! Bucket lists! Go! You dream, plan and someday will follow through. Someday. Or you will just do it. Now.
It’s a beautiful Sunday. Spring has just officially blossomed. A carefree, windows down, breeze in your hair kinda day. Maybe it’s going to rain later- A light smattering of clouds decorate the sky over head. I’m anxious to get outside and fully experience today!
Ready
You know how you can group some friends according to hobbies? I do at least. I love them all: there’s the shopping buddy, the one you call when you really need to chat over lunch, the one that you are guaranteed to enjoy every minute of happy hour with and, lucky for me, on this day, the ones that love an outdoor adventure.
The texts go out and within the hour, we’re packing our backpacks with sandwiches and snacks and goodies for the day. The beauty of a spontaneous adventure is the thrill, but sometimes the technicalities aren’t thought through…including how to fit three bicycles on a bicycle rack made for two.
Let’s just say rope and a couple strong knots go a long way.
River Bend Wildlife Management Area
We only have a few minutes’ drive, thank goodness (yikes. overloaded bicycle rack.) and we have reached our destination. River Bend Wildlife Management Area. Located less than .02 miles off exit 58 on I-16 in Dublin GA, River Bend is nature in the raw.
The clouds have now rolled in, carried by the spring breeze but oh, the beauty! Trees hover and sway towering over us as we unload the bicycles, unruly grasses tickling our ankles as we double-check our knapsacks. We’re ready!
Set, Go
Starting off down the main path at the entrance the gravel is clean but proves a workout. Perfect! Exploration and exercise. We ride, almost in complete silence except for the crunching of the path until we reach the Troup Lake boat-ramp where we decide to rest, rehydrate and check out the scenery. The afternoon has proven perfect. Birds chirping, leftover winter leaves rustling on the ground, the creaking of trees dancing, allowing splotches of sunlight to filter through their branches…
I’m overtaken by the beauty surrounding us. The concrete boat-landing is perfect for taking a break. The water reflects a mirror image of Spanish moss hanging from the bare branches of the cypress trees cluttering the edges of the water with blue patches of sky adding a colorful backdrop to the reflection. We decide break time is over and head off back down the trail.
Close to the entrance I remembered seeing the primitive camping sites and that’s where we decide to head back to. After all, we skipped lunch and still have snacks…and hammocks. We find a perfect spot, trees just close enough together, but not too close and set up. Hammocks hung, snacks spread…once again we’re lying silent, observing the clouds changing shape above us shifting and rolling.
My mind starts wandering.
Wandering back to the long week past and the one ahead. All the stresses and plans and appointments. Plans. Dreaming. This was a day well spent.
For more information on River Bend Wildlife Area, visit https://visitdublinga.org/play-outdoors/river-bend-wildlife-management-area/
