We tried to sleep without the benefit of our DC fan because we didn't know if we would have enough battery to run Joe's sleep machine too. But I wasn't sleeping very well, so at 2:00 a.m., we dug the fan out from under the bed and got it going, and I slept fine from then on. It wasn't too hot, just humid. But we had enough battery because Joe's sleep machine ran all night too, off the converter.
We made a quick walk into Walmart for pickle relish and Fruit Fresh, breakfast sandwiches at McDonalds inside Walmart, then we hooked up and were on our way by 9:30. But we passed a really nice campground about 5 miles down the road, right on Lake Sinclair, so we could have had a more scenic stop last night.
Joe had researched peach farms in Georgia and he had located Jaemor Farms at Alto, GA, fairly close to our route 441, so that was our first destination today. Although it wasn't very far off our highway, we had a hard time finding it. We missed the first road we wanted to take, so we took the next one but then we turned the wrong way at the first intersection and ended up in the town just north of our target. Finally, we put the address in GPS Lucille (I don't know why we didn't do that earlier!!!), and she got us right there, taking us across Apple Pie Ridge Road. It was a pretty drive.
This was a nice fruit market, with a little bakery and beautiful cakes, wooden birdhouses, various other gift items, and a nice selection of fruits and vegetables. We learned that Georgia lost 90% of their peach crop this year due to a late freeze, so what they had today to sell were South Carolina peaches. We bought a small box, and 2 peach turnovers, and a little container of peach ice cream. They had some interesting bird houses here, and one I thought Brenda would like.
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| I thought Brenda would like this Country Church one. (No, Brenda, I didn't buy it for you.) |
I have been pinning travel ideas on Pinterest for the last year or so, and this morning as we were driving I checked my Pinterest account on my phone to see if I had pinned anything for Georgia. And sure enough, I had a state park with a waterfall, and an aquarium in Atlanta. I found the state park on the map and it was only about 45 miles from our Peach Farm, so we decided to head over there for a couple days. This time we did put the address in Lucille. We went through one town, Dahlonega, that had flags all through the town, on both sides of the street, with names of veterans and the wars they had died fighting. I researched it and here's what I found:
Lumpkin County Memorial Marker Project
A
memorial marker with an American Flag will be used to honor deceased
individuals who have served honorably in one of the branches of the
Armed Services of these United States of America. The marker is designed
to be placed along the streets and roads of Dahlonega/Lumpkin County,
Georgia for Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and the 4th of July (or any
other time designated by the memorial committee). Each marker will be
placed at 10 yard intervals, 3 to 4 feet from the roadway. Name facing
the direction of traffic beginning on the Lumpkin County square.
They had WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam, and some markers only had a name but no war. This was a very nice way to remember the veterans they had lost. I had never seen this done before.
We arrived at the Amicalola Falls State Park about 3:00, got checked in, and found our campsite. There was a 25% grade from the visitor center to the campground, so we unhooked the car and I drove on up. I was a little leery of this steep grade, but to Old Trucker Joe, it was just a challenge that he relished. And he was up there behind me by the time I got the car parked. These campsites have patios and are really nice, very woodsy, with a nice view off the patio.
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| View from our patio |
We got ourselves situated, then took a drive to check out the lodge. There was a bear inside just waiting for us.
The lodge reminded me of one in the Grand Tetons, with a nice balcony and view. It did not have the huge fireplace the one in the Grand Tetons had, though, and the mountains weren't as tall.
There was a short trail at the lodge, so we decided to do that one today.
Then we found our way to the top of the falls and hiked down to it.
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 Joe's Selfies |
The falls was beautiful, and we are trying to figure out how much of it we can hike. The falls itself is 729 feet, the tallest cascading waterfall in the Southeast. One trail is only one mile but has 604 steps to the top of the falls (and then you have to do the return trip). There's another one that starts at the bottom of the falls and something over 100 steps. I'm not sure how much Joe's foot can handle so we will probably try the shorter one and see if we can do it.
We drove down to the reflection pool, and Joe was able to get these pictures from the bottom of the falls. He zoomed these in pretty far but they came out good.
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| Reflection Pool |
We walked just a little ways up this trail, and took some pictures of the creek coming out of the falls. There's a trail that follows the creek too, so we might consider that one.
And lo and behold, we found a Brenda rock!
Finally, we headed into the lodge for dinner since it was now 6:30 and no one was home doing any cooking. We both had soup and salads and enjoyed the view from our window table.
We only drove 173 miles today, and not all of them were forward progress. It was cloudy most of the day, in the 70s, and a lot of our driving was on shady highways. We fueled for $2.749 so the price is creeping up. Hopefully we can find it cheaper in the next few days. It sprinkled in the evening so don't know what tomorrow's weather will bring, but Joe has his camo pak ready to go.
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