Watson Mill Bridge State Park

I caught wind of this place from reading the Atlanta Unilocal threads and decided that it would be a great adventure for our Memorial Monday afternoon. We packed up the kids and all our beach/​picnic gear and headed to see this landmark and play in it’s waters.
However, it was not at all what we were expecting. The standing water had a oily haze across it’s surface, mosquito larva was in one section and huge schools of tadpoles in another. There was an odor in the air of stagnant water and/​or something dead or dying. In the small whirlpools there was this brown gewy foam building up. We also spotted a dead fish in one algae filled pool of water. So needless to say we decided to forgo our plans to get wet and just admired the landmark instead.
SUMMARY:
It’s kind of a dumping ground, as people have left behind shoes, flip flops, cans, tents and towels. Too bad, but it was still a great opportunity to visit local history. In the end, we spent a half hour taking a few pics and heading back to our car.
The bridge itself is very cool and worth a visit if you are into landmarks like these. Georgia once had over 200 covered bridges, but only 16 now remain. We’ll use this visit as a fun opportunity to begin a new quest with our children to find all the remaining covered bridges in Georgia. I loved seeing the old wooden nails used in the original construction. Overall, it was a pretty solid structure and not as rickety as it looks. The water flow was pretty low, which may be the major reason for the stagnant water pools. Probably better to visit after heavy rainfalls. We drove to Fort Yargo Beach instead for the kids to have a little cleaner water fun, which they greatly appreciated since their mom practically bathed them in antibacterial gel after splashing some water from the river on themselves. LOL