I got off a bit before sunrise and managed to make my way across south fulton parkway without too much trouble in the early morning hours. The roads were still damp from the previous wet days but not soaked and with little standing water anywhere so my tires didn't throw up any water. First route error came very soon at Mount Zion Church in Douglas county. I had not double checked my route and I had routed myself down the nonexistant gated abandoned water authority road beside the St Andrews golf course subdivision. No matter, just meant I had to ride through the subdivision as I have many times in the past, just adds miles. I had an uneventful trip through Carrollton as I found it almost deserted. I enjoyed the rolling hills and lack of traffic through the rest of Carroll county and into and through Haralson county where I made my first stop of the day in Tallapoosa. I topped off my fluids and grabbed a couple snacks to last me through the Talladega National Forest. Soon I had left Georgia and rode into Alabama on a paved back road. The first gravel I was supposed to take was obscure and unbelievably muddy, and it had ruts a foot deep like a loaded logging truck had driven down it. I walked beside the road as best I could to peek around the slight bend to see how far the carnage went, and it continued on as far as I could see so I decided to go around this part. The whole time I was investigating this I had two aggressive stray dogs barking at me. I went a bit further down to rid myself of them and consulted my map and decided on a way around, which definitely added a few miles. I decided to try to join back up with my route on another gravel road that went back that way if it looked ok, with a backup of a not too far away paved back road back to a sure good road on the route. This gravel road came up and looked passable so I turned down it. It was good riding at first but soon there were many deeply rutted mud holes that I had to walk around in the adjacent woods. and the parts in between these were on wet mud that kept trying to stick to my tires but not really causing too much issue. After not too much of this I came to a juncture and joined back up with my route, a gravel road, which by this time had gained more gravel and was a bit wider and more maintained, and i had no more trouble with crazy mud roads the rest of the ride. Soon enough I crossed over into the Talladega National Forest and proceeded to climb up onto a ridgeline, where I would stay almost the entire time except for several screaming descents and climbs up and out of creek valleys. The gravel here was as expected, a bit more and looser than ideal but it was good to not have to worry about mud at all. At length I rolled up on Coleman Lake campground, and found the entrance gated, as they were closed for the winter. Not to worry as I just went around expecting no one in the campground but there were a few campers and trucks. I heard some machine sounds while I was stopped at the toilet so i think it was some workers readying the campground for the season. I topped off my bottles at a faucet at a picnic area and made my way around the dam on a little hiking trail, and rode out up a steep hill on a little used mossy road. This led me to a small wooden church all isolated in the forest. It was Shoal Creek Methodist church, built in 1895 in the timber frame style. it had the wooden hinged window shutters with no glass, simple plain wooden interior(it wasn't locked, only latched with a small chain) containing wooden pews and a pulpit with an open bible on top. I took a stroll and some pictures of the interior and went on my way down the gravel road leading there, out to a paved back road. I wasn't on this very long before I turned onto another forest service road and back to the steep up and down. I took a gated road that dead ended at Sweetwater Lake on the little visited east side, which was steep as hell and had no gravel and lots of leaf litter. Thankfully someone had driven down it recently and cleared out some of the logs and low hanging beech branches. Still though it was slow going both up and down. This was by far the hardest part of the ride and I was happy to see the tame gravel road after a brutal climb. After a fun descent on gravel only a couple miles from Heflin, I rolled into the second Dollar general stop and got some provisions and ended up sitting under a shade tree in a nearby cemetery to enjoy my small bag of chips and take a proper(if short) break. After Heflin the terrain was still hilly but nothing like the forest roads, and with much more pavement so I made good time. The sun was pretty low in the sky by the time I rolled back into Georgia, and I decided to skip stopping in Bowdon and wait till Whitesburg. The sun went down and I put my head down as well and took advantage of the tailwind until it died soon after sunset. I felt pretty good although I was behind on drinking a bit, and so I tried to catch back up here. I decided to only get a soda at Whitesburg, and a couple more snacks that I could probably have done without. I had plenty of food in my belly but not quite enough fluids for the trip back home, but I managed just fine and actually felt pretty good on the way in. I was a bit more chafed than usual despite having used chamois butter a few times. Definitely a challenging route with lots of climbing and some tough gravel sections.