Lil Henz II wanted to go caching and so did we, but where to go? I looked over the remaining caches to log on my list of Quest caches and ultimately decided that Providence Canyon near Lumpkin, Georgia would be a good destination. I’ve been wanting to visit Providence Canyon for a while and the opportunity to check four EarthCaches off my list sealed the deal.
We wanted to get to the park early before it got hot and before the park got crowded so we were up and on the road early.
We turned off the highway and onto the park entrance road around 9:40 and discovered that the parking lot in front of the Visitor’s Center was already full. Park employees were parking visitors in the grassy areas along the roadway to the Visitor’s Center.
Nope, not gonna be crowded early, not at all…right.
We shouldered our packs, locked the car and headed to the trailhead and down the lead-in trail into the canyons. For those not familiar, Providence Canyon is often called Georgia’s ‘Little Grand Canyon’. Like the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Providence Canyon was formed by erosion. Unlike the Grand Canyon, Providence Canyon is relatively young, having formed due to poor farming practices during the 1800s. Providence Canyon is a bit of a misnomer. Rather than being one canyon, there are actually nine separate canyons, ok, extremely big gullies, approximately 150 feet deep at the deepest, that eventually merge to form a single drainage.
Once we were down in the canyon we found the canyon floor to be wet, but strangely, not muddy. Instead of finding large amounts of silt and clay, the canyon floor was quite sandy. We learned that this was due in part to the sand-rich formations that form the canyon walls and in part to the fact that the smaller sand and clay particles washed downstream easier during rain events than the larger, heavier sand.
We headed into Canyons 1, 2, and 3 to explore and log Providence Canyon: Unconformity (GC7DRW8), the first of four EarthCaches for the day.
Providence Canyon: Talus Cones (GC7E0F8), located in Canyon 5 was the second EarthCache of the day.
Once we finished Providence Canyon: Talus Cones, we headed back up the lead-in trail to the canyon rim trail to hike around to our third EarthCache of the day, It’s All Relative (GC89D5W). As we headed to It’s All Relative, we stopped at one of the overlooks and got a much better look at the unconformity.
What is an unconformity, you ask? In geologists’ language, an unconformity is a discontinuity in rock sequence indicating interruption of sedimentation, commonly accompanied by erosion of the rock or other strata below the break.
Picture this in your head… 100 million years or so ago, the portion of Georgia south of the Fall Line was covered by shallow ocean. Layers and layers of sand, silts and clay were deposited in the shallow marine environment. Over time the ocean receded and surface of the sand/silt/clay layers eroded and the top layers of sediment were carried away and deposited elsewhere. Somewhere around 65-70 million years ago, sea level rose and younger sediments were deposited on top of the old erosion surface. Essentially there is a time gap between the top of the older sediments and the bottom of the younger sediments.
That gap in time can be seen at the contact surface between the lighter colored sediments of the Providence Formation and the redder sediments of the Clayton Formation in the photo above.
OK, sorry, nerded out for a bit. Hey, I’m a geologist. Let’s call it an occupational hazard.
Back to the story. After logging It’s All Relative, we had one more EarthCache, Providence Canyon Earthcache (GC5WVMG) to log. Before we left, we decided to try to find a multi-cache (The Waltons, GC3DQMD) whose first stage was located in the Providence Methodist Church cemetery just outside the park.
We worked out the coordinates for the final stage which happened to be back near the Visitor’s Center. We followed the arrow on my GPSr back to the GZ and began to look around. It wasn’t long before Jenna told me that she had found it. At least she didn’t hide it from me for half an hour or so this time. We signed the log, tucked it back in its hiding spot, and then walked back to the car to head home.
So how’s The Great Georgia EarthCache Quest coming along? 98 caches logged, 173 to go.
Get Out! 