Theme of this ride was bushwacking. I planned to get to get to the Bartram trail via a nearby road(hickory knut gap) which turned out to be a challenge in itself despite the trail being only a football field length away. Rhododendrons, when dense can be nearly impassable, especially when trying to get a bike through as well. Hiked down the trail a bit to a nice campsite and found my old road I needed to take and it was very overgrown but passable thankfully. I came to a junction of forest roads soon after and probably should have followed the more maintained one but since I had routed a different way I followed that hoping to not get lost. As it turns out it would probably have been easier to follow the other road but I made it through ok and emerged onto a nice gravel climb, and a descent on torn up pavement. This avoided a lot of hwy 106 riding and I enjoyed a fast descent on Hale Ridge and Overflow creek roads. Climbed a little ways up hwy 28 and found a litle change purse beside the road which had a rolled up dollar bill and some crystal meth in a little baggie, then made it to the fire station for my turn. I had forgotten my wallet so I could not use the vending machine there, and searched in vain for a faucet and continued on my way. The gravel road from the fire house quickly became singletrack after the private property. Surprisingly the resulting trail was passable if not in perfect condition, it was obvious that someone uses it on a fairly regular basis. At every logging road junction a well beaten trail went down it. At some point however the way due north, my routing, was off the beaten path and I was forced to do a bit of road archaeology. The old maps show it as being a proper secondary road but now it's not much more than a deep gully between rhododendrons. Still it wasn't that hard to get through for most of the way till I got close to the end and the trail/road just faded away to nothing. I was quite lost for a few minutes there until I realized that the current road was above me and out of sight. A quick ford and a short scramble brought me level with it and back to a civilized dirt road. Or so I thought. There was a really cool old cemetery near where I joined the road, and after that the road, which is open to vehicles, was like many 4x4 roads in GA, a rutted and washed out, steep "road". It would take a pretty well equipped 4x4 to successfully make it down this road but even on a gravel bike it was ok. Near the state line the road maintenance picked up again and it was like a normal gravel road up to horse cove. A ride that on paper should have been 4-5 hours ended up taking well over 6. But it was neat being out there and exploring some of these old abandoned "roads".