Hanging out with FDR!

Friday 24 November
Today we drove south to FD. Roosevelt State Park. The park is named for the former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served as the 32nd president, from 1933 until his death in 1945. Roosevelt visited this area often, seeking a treatment for his paralytic illness in nearby Warm Springs. His illness which struck him in1921, and left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down, has always been referred to as polio, though a 2003 study strongly suggested it may have been Guillain-Barré syndrome. He first visited the warm springs in 1924, and just prior to being elected President in 1932 he had a residence built nearby which would come to be known as the Little White House. You can visit the house, but we didn’t have time today. He was intrigued by the potential benefits of hydrotherapy and established a rehabilitation center at Warm Springs in 1926. He assembled a staff of physical therapists and used most of his inheritance to purchase the Merriweather Inn. In 1938, he founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
We started our hike for the day at Dowdell’s Knob, at 1,395 feet above sea level, which was Rosevelt’s favourite picnic spot, center right photo, and this is also where the bronze statue, top left is located. It was a good trail, making a loop around the ridge, almost 6 miles. However, I was glad to have my hiking poles for extra stability, as the trail was quite rocky in places, and with tree roots, all partially hidden by all the fallen leaves, so it would have been easy to roll an ankle or worse!
Step count: 15,465