I was short on time so I didn't do the ride I had planned, instead I just set out to check out the connection of Glade road from Georgia through to NC and Bull Pen road. I have two books about mountain biking in this region both from the nineties that mention this route. However I was of the impression that the NC portion was canonized as a hiking only trail, at least according to the National Geographic topo maps I have. The connection is obscure on both major mapping softwares(google and OSM). Even the current USGS topo map is uncertain about the part in NC around a big bog. But there was a decent heatmap signature even on RWGPS, so I figured there had to be something. It was a very hot climb up from 28 on Glade road, which was paved at the beginning till I got past a few houses and then it switched to well maintained gravel, then past another private road it devolved into standard Chattahoochee NF poorly maintained road still open to 4x4s. This was slow going, as probably on Friday the area must have gotten tons of rain because all the mudholes were filled in and there was soft mud everywhere, in addition it was pretty steep in parts. I was pursued the entire climb by big biting mosquito-fly like things that were really annoying. At last I began to approach the state line, and I took a diversion to climb up to a very isolated cemetery, from the early 20th century. At the state line the road changed to a narrow singletrack, marked by several large mounds of dirt that was Nantahala's attempt to keep out motorized vehicles. This was pretty beaten down but still nothing official at all. I continued north still on a relatively well worn singletrack. Not too far along I encountered a really beaten down and official looking trail that was running east-west. The trail I was on led up the hill steeply to this trail, and I figured I was going to have to poach this probably hiking only trail to get back to Bullpen road. It was very road like so the going was fast. I reached a trail junction and there was a trail marker and to my surprise, it indicated that I was legal after all! it was multi use for hiking, biking and horse riding. Nice. This really made my day as the whole thing was open, making me curse myself for not having checked this out earlier. No telling how long this had been open. Anyway I reached the trailhead on a road very near Bull Pen road, and decided to ride that road as well. It was gated after the trail and headed up Chestnut mountain. I expected it to be really overgrown but somebody was riding or walking it frequently enough to beat back the foliage a bit and the ride was pretty easy. It dead ended at a meadow, and I turned around to explore the other branches. On one that led down another large field, was very beaten down and led to a faint path in the woods. This led shortly to a bare rock outcrop on the side of Chestnut mountain and a spectacular view of the east. Just amazing. I took in the view for a bit and then bombed back down, rode up Horse Cove where I thought I was about to run into a storm as the wind was whipping up fiercely. But it missed completely but did cool things off for the trip back from Highlands.