James H. "Sloppy" Floyd State Park

The life of a SysAdmin can sometimes be feast or famine – if things are humming right along, I busy myself with updates and proactive measures. If something goes down, it makes for long days and nights. I have had a few weeks of “feast”, and so decided to take some time to recharge my batteries in the great outdoors.

Teri and I hopped in Blue and headed two hours north-west, to James H. “Sloppy” Floyd State Park in Summerville, GA.

As the “Park Project” continues, I find that some of our state parks are quiet and unassuming. They’re not exotic destinations, but rather small pockets of greenspace in their community that offer outdoor leisure to the locals. Most of these parks would not be on a vacation list, but they make for perfectly acceptable ways to spend some time in the sun amongst friends.

This park is a prime example of that. It has a quaint little visitor center that offers the essentials but not much more. They were out of stock of enamel pins, as nearly half of the parks we have visited are, which was disappointing but understandable – supply chain issues persist through the pandemic. They have two beautiful lakes which are stocked, making fishing the prime activity at this park.

The main feature of the park is the Marble Mine Trail which ends at a small overhang with trickling water into a collection pool below. It’s only about a mile down Marble Mine Trail, which is more of a gravel road than a trail, and didn’t offer much in the way of photography opportunities.

We visited in the middle of summer, so it was hot and humid. The hike out is a bit of a climb towards the end, but you can rest in the shade of the overhang once you arrive.

Having seen so few natural features on the way out, I switched to my macro lens and looked for tiny details on the way back. I found some spiders.

This little gal is Verrucosa arenata (Arrowhead Orb-weaver). She was incredibly shy – everytime I’d get close to her with my macro lens, she would throw herself out of her web and repel down to the ground (3 or 4 feet). Then, after a few minutes she would climb back to her web with her safety line.

I have no idea what member of the Agelenopsis family this gal belongs too, but we were so impressed by her huge funnel web, which stretched two or three feet through some short branches of a nearby bush. Usually these funnel spiders (or grass spiders as they are also called) are fairly shy, but this gal didn’t seem to intimidate by my attempts to take her photo.