Olympic class Ocoee River
Trip Start
Nov 19, 2007
1
45
217
Trip End
Ongoing
Turtletown, Tennessee
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Sidra was gracious enough to drive all the way out to us in the Park and pick us up. In between seeing properties Andy and I walked on the paths up to fabulous waterfalls and biked along the amazing Ocoee River.
The river has many dams on it created in the 30's by the Ocoee Power Company. The power company keeps the water dammed and pumps it up into pipes that carry the water to the tops of the next mountain peak where it fills a holding tank. The water is then released through huge pipes that go down hill from the holding tanks back into the river for its next cycle. The drop of water creates head waters for making electricity.
The dams are also controlled by the power company to allow releases that provide tremendous power for head water electricity. These scheduled releases have created a secondary sport industry. The river as you see it in the pictures has relatively no water in many areas. These rocky areas are totally covered on the weekends as the dams let out millions of gallons of collected water. Kayakers from around the nation come and try their talents against the rapids. It was amazing to watch hundreds of kayakers on the wildly flowing river on Sunday...and then bike the river path with nothing but rocks on Tuesday!
The big claim to fame here is that the Olympic Kayaking events happened here on the Ocoee back in 1996. Very cool what an Olympic event does to an area!
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