A River Adventure
♦ Rome resident Joe Cook and daughter Ramsey complete 16th Paddle Georgia together
Editor’s Note: Rome resident Joe Cook, who organizes Georgia River Network’s annual Paddle Georgia adventures, on June 25 completed a 112-mile, seven-day canoe trip on the Chattahoochee River with his daughter Ramsey. This marks the 16th Paddle Georgia event the father and daughter have participated in since 2005, covering more than 1600 miles of rivers. Georgia River Network will host 15 river trips this year, engaging more than 600 participants in these educational adventures.
People often ask why Georgia River Network undertakes its week-long river sojourns each summer. As the coordinator of the organization’s Paddle Georgia events, I typically give the official answer which is we’re connecting people with Georgia’s rivers, establishing those intimate relationships with flowing water that lead individuals to donate to river protection causes, call and email their local legislators about water policy and volunteer for citizen water monitoring and river cleanup programs.
But an equally true answer is: It’s just a heck of a lot of fun. After all, a bad day on the river is better than a good day at work. I’m just lucky enough to work on the river.
In June, Georgia River Network returned to the Chattahoochee River — the site of our first ever Paddle Georgia in 2005. During that initial year, we hoped we could get 100 people to sign up for the trip; we got 300. Through 2019, it had grown into the largest week-long canoe/kayak camping adventure in the country with more than 300 people typically participating. Then COVID-19 hit. Since then, the organization has retooled for small-group trips and on June 19-25, my daughter Ramsey and I joined some 35 other fun-loving paddlers to explore the Chattahoochee River from near Buford Dam, through Atlanta, and on to the city of Franklin — a distance of 112 miles.
The Chattahoochee is to me what the Coosa, Etowah and Oostanaula are to Rome natives. Growing up in Atlanta, it is where I first discovered the pleasures of playing about in boats, rafting the river’s rapids and leaping from the 20-foot-high Diving Rock just downstream from Atlanta’s perimeter highway — a thrill that to this day makes the 50-something year-old me feel like a 15-year-old again.
That my daughter was accompanying me on this journey through the river of my youth made this most recent trip all the more special. A recent Georgia Tech graduate, she begins her career this month working for an environmental engineering firm.
Together, we jumped from the diving rock, bruised ourselves smashing through the City of Atlanta’s notorious “Waterworks Rapid” and frolicked in the falls at Hilly Mill Creek…memories I’m certain will last beyond my lifetime.
As I looked about, I saw others making similar memories. For all the natural beauty a river offers, it’s the camaraderie between family and fellow travelers that make the journey unforgettable.
There was Larry and Chase Delbridge, the father and son team from Marietta, also leaping from the Diving Rock and body surfing together through the river’s gentle shoals in Carroll County.
There were three generations of the Pate family from Gwinnett County on the journey — dad Terry, daughter
Meghan Zimmerman and 6-yearold granddaughter Ellie Zimmerman. When Meghan coaxed her daughter beneath the roaring falls at Hilly Mill Creek on the final day of our journey, it seemed the cautious youngster’s conversion to full-blown river rat was complete.
The second day of our journey brought a host of father and son teams to us in the form of Boy Scout Troop 1906 from East Point. Led by Nick Brooks, among the scouts were Nick’s sons Asher and Preston who stroked 13 miles through the Roswell portion of the river and camped with us at Chattahoochee Nature Center.
For some of the scouts, it was their first journey on the Chattahoochee, and one they won’t soon forget. Among the memories: a swamped canoe getting pinned to DeKalb County’s water intake structure and taking part in collecting some 400 golf balls from the river bottom (yes, 400! — there’s a lot of golf courses along the river in North Fulton).
Our final day of the journey brought to us the intrepid Barkes family from Marietta. In tow with parents Philip and Liliana were six of their seven children. When Philip and Liliana stroked through Daniel Shoals, with their youngest, Javier and Julieta, on board, the squeals that emanated from the children were streaked with both terror and joy. The family water battle that broke out below the shoals was epic.
The revelry of these families brought to mind my mother and father who in the late 1970s saw fit to invest in a cheap inflatable raft, if only to avoid the exorbitant rental costs of the era, so we could regularly float the Chattahoochee. That single K-mart purchase put me on the river seemingly every warm weekend of my youth and has kept me there—in some boat or another — ever since.
Unwittingly, my parents planted a seed that has now born two generations of river lovers — the youngest of which will soon design projects to protect our water resources. Yes, I might be a bit proud.
I know not what will become of Ellie Zimmerman or Javier and Julieta Barkes or Asher and Preston Nicks, but I know for certain their lives will be richer and more adventurous because their parents took them playing about in boats. And, maybe, just maybe, each one of them will grow up to love rivers. That should make the world just a little better place to live.
If you’d like to make some family memories on river adventures, Georgia River Network is hosting nine more adventures this year, including a snorkel and paddle trip on the Conasauga River Aug. 20-21. www.garivers.org/events