After the wedding and the reception and getting back to my hotel room that Saturday night I was standing outside - not quite ready to go to bed - and realized that there was a small hill just beyond the parking lot. Based on my general knowledge of the topography of Rome I assumed this meant that the hotel, motel actually, was right up against the Oostanaula river. I decided to investigate. I sauntered across the parking lot, sans shirt mind you, and after reaching the top of this hill realized that the motel was not actually right on the river, but it certainly wasn't far away; maybe another 25 yards or so down the hill and through some trees. I could see the water moving behind them. What the motel actually was adjacent to though was one of the bike trails I'd been eager to traverse - The Heritage park trail to be precise. I could have taken this trail back to my hotel instead of the streets. I'd left my SUV downtown and kept the bike in the back so that I could return to my accommodations for the night without risking DUI. There's always risk of BUI, I suppose, but I really wasn't nearly as intoxicated as I figured I'd be after attending a wedding with a proportionately high number of folks who imbibe and I'm sure a BUI wouldn't be nearly as expensive. Anyhow, the trail was 100 feet from my motel door and I intended to utilize it the following morning.
That Sunday morning I woke up feeling relatively well compared to how I normally feel on a Sunday morning. I made my coffee in the motel provided coffee maker. I sipped it down and I headed out on the trail. If I'd gone east on the trail it would have ended up in a neighborhood in the Upper Avenue A neighborhood. The trail on the opposite side of the Oostanaula goes all the way to State Mutual Stadium where the Rome Braves play. I went west, the direction of my automobile. At that point of the trail you're up on a hill and can see downtown Rome off in the distance. The Forum complex, various church steeples, the clock tower and the library. The trail splits at this point and one can either exit out onto Turner McCall Boulevard or go down a hill and meander alongside the river.
The thing that makes Rome so appealing is that there is so much park space, pedestrian bridges and trails right alongside the rivers. If you spend any time there at all you come away with a feeling that your time there was connected to rivers and the hills and thus, in an odd way, connected to cities and towns beyond that are linked by these same waterways.
The other trail in Rome is the Kingfisher trail, which can either be accessed via 4th street or by crossing over the Etowah river on broad and taking an immediate right and hitting the trail right there where it goes under the Broad street bridge. I accessed via 4th street, which has a slightly gritty industrial feel. You go over some railroad tracks and you're on the trail. This trail is noticeably more wooded and secluded. Scenic in an entirely different way than Heritage Park. The former railroad bridge crosses the Etowah and tall trees and kudzu covered hillsides abound.
After crossing over the bridge the trail continues on and you have the option of crossing over another small bridge to the right or continuing ahead through a thick canopy of trees and the trail ends not long after that at a street next to a substation in a sparsely populated residential area. The small bridge goes over a rushing small creek and it honestly made me want to go find an inner-tube as it was sweltering that day and the creek looked oh so cool and refreshing.
The rest of the trail winds along the river and is flanked by those hills blanketed in kudzu. There was also the occasional bird house, added by the city I would think, and some places that it looked like folks had been fishing from - although I'm not sure how the heck they got to some of them as the foliage was so thick. There were also some worn down trails coming down from the hillsides that I can only assume were made by animals making their way to the river, for a drink. The trail continued to wind further on, behind a new mid-rise retirement community and a retail section of old buildings and I ended up at the Broad street bridge I mentioned earlier, in front of Myrtle Hill Cemetery.
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