Lake Richard B. Russell

Lake Richard B. Russell State Park

Comer, GA

June 12, 2010

This was a spur of the moment trip.. we were actually on the way to Walmart to get some aluminum foil and a towel for Kim when we saw a sign for this state park. We were in fact camping at nearby Watson Mill Bridge State Park!

Well This trip was Kim, Megan, Scott, Dennis, and I (Dennis took the picture!). It must have been a bad omen from the start with this bee.. well this bee was we thought watching us. It would literally buzz in the same place pointing in out direction as if to say this is my spot. It finally went away when an even larger bee showed up!

We all went into the visitors lodge to get maps and patches. Neither of which was provided by the park! They had been sold out of patches and had no intention of purchasing new ones. We later found out at Watson Mill Bridge that due to funding, parks may actually be getting corporate sponsors, potentially changing some names!

Well we were all very disappointed in not having the patches... thinking about ordering custom ones on ebay or the like.

Anyway, we found a 2 mile trail near the actual lake that looked to be promising. The park itself was humongous containing not only the lake but a golf course and disc golf. We later found it was named after GA's youngest governor who came to office at the age of 33!

The Blackwell Bridge Trail started out beautifully with a trail of recycled tire material laid down by the local detention center. It was really nice to be able to walk on supportive ground. On top of that they had several labels showing various types of trees which was pretty nice as well. Roughly .3 miles in, this trail stopped. It felt like we were going backwoods creating our own trail. The trail was poorly maintained with areas that you could barely tell where the path was. The shrubs were overgrown onto the trail as well. The trail markers were also barely visible until the last stretch of the trail.

We were not impressed with the park at all and unless they purchase some patches, it will be one I will not return to!

I will say, this park is probably more for older visitors. Very quiet place for a Saturday in the summer, even with the boats. The campsites were also pretty small and close together. It seemed to make Watson Mill even more like heaven for us!