Explore Georgia || Providence Canyon (Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon)
Let me just start by saying how impressed I am, that I’d never heard of this place before. After countless research on areas near me to go hiking, this never once popped up, until it did by accident when I was researching a different location. Talk about a happy little accident.
I turned this trip into a weekender, mainly because it was about a 4.5 hour drive from where I am currently located. I grabbed a hotel, I searched up places to stop along the way, and it was such a great 48 hours of solid quality time with Jayce (doggo).
Depending upon where you’re coming from, the places listed here are all within a 20-45 minute radius of the canyons, so if you’re inspired to see all three, take the trip!
First Stop: Drive Thru Museum aka Alabama Little Museum of Wonders
This is a small oddities museum right off of the highway in a small town of Alabama called Seale. You can’t park alongside the road if you want to get out and explore, so pull in and park on the side of the roundabout within the museum. Here you will find 3 small box cars FILLED with oddities and strange/abstract artwork.
More enamoring than the art itself, however is the story behind this creation. The two artists responsible for the collection are Butch Anthony, and John Henry. Butch initially set this up as a taxidermy and architect shop, which eventually led to the collection of bizarre sculptures and stuffed animals you see behind the glass. Other objects from the collection come from around the world (but most claimed to be from Alabama). Really cool shit. For a side of the highway attraction such as this one, I was honestly impressed.
Jayce and I stopped at the hotel and got some beauty sleep in, and then started our day with some good, old fashioned hiking.
Second Stop: Providence Canyon State Park
The park is really easy to find. Pop it into Google, and voila. It costs $5 to get in, unless you come on foot (and to my knowledge this price remains the same if you decide to camp here as well, but as I did not camp, I did not do the research). If you want my suggestion on how to tackle this park, follow my lead.
While you might be tempted to park along the first few lots to get out and view the summit right away, I recommend driving straight to the trailhead and hiking the canyons first. So drive to the end of the road, and start your journey here.
The trail is a loop, and is about 4 miles altogether. I would label it relatively easy (as the majority is flat once you hike to the bottom of the canyons), but there are signs labeled throughout that recommend only those without health problems should tackle the hike. I believe this is probably because the near end of the trail is pretty much all uphill.
There are 9 canyons to explore here (and not to ruin it for you, all of which pretty much look the same BUT are all breathtaking). I made it to canyons 4,5 and 7,8. Canyon 6 is really hard to find. The trail gets pretty overgrown towards the end, and I couldn’t find the remainder of it the further along I hiked, so we turned around.
When we were satisfied with what we’d seen, we hiked out to go check out the overlooks. This is by far the best part of the hike. The view is so surreal, and if you didn’t know where you were, you’d never guess that you were nestled somewhere in the woods in Georgia State.
Really cool fact: These canyons are not made of rock, they actually appear to be massive sandpiles, created on accident due to poor farming practice dating back to the 19th century. Therefore, the canyon walls cannot be climbed.
Third Stop: Pasaquan
I don’t know what I was expecting, honestly. I found this place last minute on Atlas Obscura, and it looked cool enough so, why not? I was expecting an abandoned village, closed to the public, and the possibility of needing to hop a fence and fend off a couple of dogs to walk around here. Wrong. This place is 100% open to the public, thanks to students of Columbus State University who have brought this place back to life.
It’s not so much the little village that peaked my interest, but the story behind it. The structure was built by a southern artist by the name of Eddie Owen Martin. A man who left home at 14 years old, fell into prostitution, gambling, drag, and got lost in the brutalities of the real world. He sought shelter in this location in Georgia where he built the six structures here, along with his own religion that fuses the cultures of Africa, pre-columbian Mexico, and Native America, and that truly shows in the artistic design of the buildings.
Unfortunately, Martin became ill physically and mentally, and committed suicide, leaving behind this legacy.
I guess it just goes to show, to never judge a book by its cover. I thought I would be bored to death here, but I honestly felt it was such an appropriate close to a short and sweet-lived little weekend getaway. I hope that if you find yourself in this area, you check these places out for yourself.
In the mean time, I’ll be checking out just how big and easy it is over there in the Big Easy.
Creep it real, y’all
-C
