Had a very quiet trip down SW through Grantville and through Hogansville, entirely on pavement. Found a TN License plate in the middle of the road south of Hogansville at South Lee street and Mobley Bridge road. I stashed it just off the right of way under a tree and partially covered it with leaves so I can come back and grab it later. One thing is for sure, when I plan out rides with lots of dead end roads, the RWGPS route planner underestimates the total elevation gain significantly. These roads were really hilly, almost no flat and of course they end at the worst possible spot, in the middle of a steep hill. Of course I am used to this. There were some extremely steep grades, many over 15%. Things were pretty quiet here too, I barely saw anyone out. AS I made my way SW along the rough edge of the shoreline of West Point lake, I did a couple of roads that were simple flagpole subdivisions with mostly trailers along them. They were really steep, the first allowing me to get well over 40 before turning around abruptly when I was about to run into someone's driveway at the end. Each parallel road had a resident cat that was just strolling along the road. Both were pretty friendly and didn't run away. I rolled on to McGee Bridge park, the only official park I was going to visit on the day. It was nice and shaded with lots of picnic tables, a fishing boardwalk, pavilion, and bathrooms that were open and had a working sink. I was nearly out of water as this was around mile 80 or so. I had planned to try to make it to the DG at mile 95(or 100 as it's right across from the Pyne road trails). I had brought 5 liters of water with me. I figured perfect, this will allow me to get by without buying water at the store. I went about filling up my bottle and my two platypus containers, and only then I glanced at the sign above the sink that said NOTICE: Non Potable Water. My heart sank. If I were out in the wilds of desertified USA I would have drank it(although I probably would have filtered first). So I just dumped out what I had gathered and continued on my way with about a bottle and a half left. Next followed more hilly subdivisions and finally I rolled up to the DG and decided to stop before going to the trails. Since I carried more capacity with my platypus bags, I could finally go for the cheap option of just buying a gallon of water for less than the price of a 20oz soda. This place was packed but thankfully it had several self checkouts and it didn't take as long as a typical DG stop. I rode over to the Pyne road trails and expected them to be deserted since it was the middle of a hot day, but there was like 50 cars in the parking lot. I checked the bathrooms which were open, and had a working sink that didn't say it was undrinkable. Should have come here first. Oh well. I was surprised that there wasn't a map or anything and it was actually a bit difficult to find the trails. I rode in and quickly found the large party of people. I was new to the place and even though I had a rough guide loaded in the GPS, it wasn't really true to the ground. So I eventually got behind them as I did a little loop which pointed me back in the direction of the trailhead. They asked if I wanted to pass(it was like 20 people) and I replied that it was fine, we were almost to a trail junction. After a short pause right after this, they asked me where the trailhead was. I had just ridden there so I gave directions(they were like 100 feet from it) and didn't see anyone after they cleared out. I explored the east side of the trail system, which was confusing despite having lots of signs. There was obviously a legacy trail system that existed before the recent rebuild, and some of it was still open, and so I did a bit of wandering to figure out where things went. I had intended to do the whole trail system but ultimately didn't see the connector trail and it was just as well because I was already running long with the day. I headed back to Pyne road and continued on my ride. At a bridge over a creek on Pyne road I found a 6" 3/8" ratchet extension which I put in my bag. Soon I rolled up to the hard part of the day, exploring the two abandoned parks on the lake. A significant part of the shoreline is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and they set up and built parks all along the lake, nearly ever peninsula has some sort of access. But at some point in the last 50 years a couple have been abandoned for whatever reason, probably it was too much to maintain if I had to guess, so they focused on only a few heavily used parks. Understandable. What's interesting is they just let them go completely closed off the areas with a simple road closed gate, and opened them up to hunting. The first one called Bird Creek Recreation Area on old maps, was kinda eerie. The roads were paved but had lots of trees growing up through, and lots of pinestraw and leaves covering them. If they had been gravel roads they would have been impassable by now as the pavement retards growth, at least for a little while. Eventually after enough time the forest will completely take over. The bathrooms were all in really bad shape, the roofs had failed on all, and they had long since been vandalized by whoever. I really enjoyed riding here, it was like riding pavement singletrack. It was bumpy due to the way the water was running off and collecting the tree debris, but not too bad. Rather enjoyable. And of course not a soul there other than me. The second abandoned park called Potts Road Recreation Area, led down a gravel road, not a good sign for overgrowth. I reached the gate and was able to ride a long way, but eventually came to a cable across the way I needed to go and afterwards the going was very overgrown. The forest wasn't too mature, and although there was evidence of burning in the past, it had overgrown to the almost impassable point. I simply needed to walk only a quarter mile or so to get a hard to get tile. Easy I thought. But there were big huge blackberry bushes higher than my head, among other thorny plants bigger than me. I parked the bike and decided to work my way close to the shore hoping things would be better there, and had an easier go of it. There were some open spots and I crossed one of the penisulas to get back to the shore and continue west, the direction I needed to go. It just kept on getting thornier and thornier. I was fighting for every step and it was painful. I only had on shorts so I was getting scraped all over my legs despite how much i tried to avoid them. I finally got to the point where I thought I should be good to get the tile, and retraced my steps. I don't know why it didn't occur to me until the trip back to the bike, but I could have just waded in the lake along the shallow shore. It was pretty easy going this way and I made it back pretty easily, and was extremely relieved. It was the hottest part of the day, and while I had plenty of water it really sapped me. I rode back out and was so overjoyed when I got to the highway 29 crossing, I had completely forgotten that there was a store here, and a brand new DG. even though it had not even been 30 miles since my last stop I made no hesitation and stopped again. I bought another gallon of water and another coke, filled my bottles in the shade and pressed on. Because of this stop I was able to ride through LaGrange without worry about finding a store, and had no issues and very little traffic getting over to Whitfield road where I had a quiet ride east out of Troup county. In Meriwether I enjoyed very quiet roads and backed off my pace a lot as I was going a bit too hard for too long, like I always do I get a bit fired up about getting home way too early. I was dealing with some serious chafing issues in strange places and I used quite a bit of chamois buttr. Thought I might need to stop at some point but I made my bottles and food last till the end. I did need my light but only for PTC really.