The Falls and Appalachian Trail (6/5/15)

Today was a good day.  Exhausting, but good.  Our first Excellent Adventure of the day was a hike to the base of the Amicacola Falls, one mile (each way), and included 175 stair steps  (each way).  We started off from the Reflection Pool and followed the tumbling creek (Amicacola is a Cherokee Indian word for "tumbling waters") all along this route.

The entire hike was so beautiful that we just kept taking pictures. 

We reached the steps.  Actually, the stairs were easier than the uphill trail.

 Almost to the top!

We reached the top.  The view here was absolutely breath-taking.  I love waterfalls, and this one was magnificent.

 Our selfie.

I said NO to the next 425 steps!  As the sunlight changed over the top of the falls, the colors changed too, and you could see and feel the mist in the air from the crashing water.

 Joe got this camo pak as a Christmas present from Tiffany and Eric, and this was his first chance to use it.  He was happy to have it for today's hiking.

Finally, we headed back down the stairs, which was a little easier.  We came across Zach's name carved in the wood rail, so we thought Rick and Lori would be interested to know -- maybe he's not really in California!

We were happy to see the end of the trail, and Joe found a rock to rest on.  We had made it down!

Then he comes up with this great idea that we should hike to the Southern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail, on Springer Mountain, which is about a 45 minute drive, plus another strenuous mile hike, from here.  We stopped back by the campsite to get the GPS, then off we went on our second Excellent Adventure of the day.  We had gotten a map and instructions at the lodge last night, so we had directions, and the last 6.5 miles was a Forest Service road (dirt), so Joe got very excited about that (since there is never a dirt side road that doesn't have his name on it, even if his name has to be "Authorized Personnel").   But once we got to the parking lot, we had a hard time figuring out which way to go.  Finally, a couple of hikers showed up and got us started in the right direction.  One way out of the parking lot is the 0.9 mile hike to the Terminus, and the other trail out of the opposite side of the parking lot is the rest of the 2,159 mile TRAIL (we did not want to get on the wrong trail here). The concept of establishing a trail (2,160-miles) from here in Georgia all the way to Mt. Katahdin, Maine, and thinking people would hike it, boggles the mind.  And this trail is no picnic in the park -- it is very rocky, the part we were on was almost all uphill, sometimes a little muddy, sometimes pretty narrow.  And people actually attempt to hike the entire trail.  Amazing!  People are nuts.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:
        The Appalachian National Scenic Trail, generally known as the Appalachian Trail or simply the A.T., is a marked hiking trail in the eastern United States extending between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.^[1] The trail is approximately 2,200 miles (3,500 km)^[a] long, though the precise length changes over time as parts are modified or rerouted. The trail passes through the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The path is maintained by 31 trail clubs and multiple partnerships,^[2] and managed by the National Park Service and the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy.^[3][4] The majority of the trail is in forest or wild lands, although some portions traverse towns, roads and farms.
The Appalachian Trail is famous for its many hikers, some of whom, called thru-hikers, attempt to hike it in its entirety in a single season. Others have managed to perform a "round-trip" of the trail where they thru-hike from one end to the other and then turn around to thru-hike the trail the other way, otherwise known as a "yo-yo." Many books, memoirs, web sites and fan organizations are dedicated to these pursuits.

And here's some of the history of its beginning:

The trail was conceived by Benton MacKaye, a forester who wrote his original plan shortly after the death of his wife in 1921. MacKaye's idea detailed a grand trail that would connect a series of farms and wilderness work/study camps for city-dwellers. In 1922, at the suggestion of Major William A. Welch, director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, his idea was publicized by Raymond H. Torrey with a story in the New York Evening Post under a full-page banner headline reading "A Great Trail from Maine to Georgia!". The idea was quickly adopted by the new Palisades Interstate Park Trail Conference as their main project.

On October 7, 1923, the first section of the trail, from Bear Mountain west through Harriman State Park to Arden, New York, was opened. MacKaye then called for a two-day Appalachian Trail conference to be held in March 1925 in Washington, D.C. This resulted in the formation of the Appalachian Trail Conference (now called the Appalachian Trail Conservancy).^[7]

I'm sure they will be rewriting its history now to include the information that the Froeschkes' hiked the first mile of it. 

Anyhow, Joe's ready to go.

 We will be watching for these white hash marks to let us know we are on the Trail.

 Joe's ready.  Me, I'm not so sure.

But off we go.  The trail started out downhill but quickly changed into an uphill grind.  It took us about 45 minutes, I think.  It seemed like a long mile!

 We had frequent rest stops.

But we finally made it TO THE TOP!!!

In the side of the big rock, there is a drawer with a book for visitors to sign, so I added our name to that.  It felt like geocaching a little bit.  But there were no little surprises in it, and the book was full.  Someone had added a single sheet so there was room to add our names.

We didn't see any wildlife up here, or on the trail.  I did have an interesting big-eyed bug land on my neck that I could have done without.  I must have stunned him when I knocked him off because he didn't move again.

We didn't take any pictures on the way back down, we just kept looking for the parking lot.  And was it ever a welcome sight when it finally came into view.  I kept hoping for a bus, but none ever appeared.  My plan had been that I would make spaghetti for dinner tonight, but once I sat down in the car, I did not see cooking and washing dishes in my future tonight, so we drove over to the next town, East Ellijay, and found a nice Mexican restaurant to feed us.  On the way we passed a wood carving shop that had a couple bears I liked -- I especially liked the black one laying down, but my picture doesn't do it justice.  There was a guy there just leaving (presumably the owner/carver) and I didn't want to give him false hopes so we didn't hang around -- we just pulled the car off the road and I snapped the picture.

I was really ready to be back at the RV, but Joe had seen a sign in the park about a church down a side road, so he thought we should check it out.  It turned out to be a 2-mile dirt road (he loved it) that went on and on, and because it took so long, he was really determined to find it.  I can't imagine people driving this narrow gravel road every week to go to church, but it appears to still be in use.  It was pretty, with a pretty cemetery beside it.  However, some of the graves were flying rebel flags and the gravestones said the person was born in the 1800s, so they probably did fight in the Civil War.

Finally, finally, we got back to camp.  I must have rested some because I decided to do a load of laundry since the laundry (1 washer, 1 dryer) was only about 300 feet from our campsite.  So while I did that, Joe took a couple pictures of our campsite from a different viewpoint.  I was thinking there was plenty of room on that patio for a hot tub, and I could use one tonight!

So now it's past 10:30, I've already taken some Ibuprofen,  and I'm putting this exhausted body to bed.  We didn't drive any RV miles today, but hiking 4 miles was quite a feat!

Amicalola Falls (6/4/15)

Our pizza last night was good.  The crust was real chewy, but very tasty.  We had garlic and olive oil as our "sauce" instead of the traditional red pizza sauce, but we liked it.  Joe ordered a "holy shiitake" for his half, but he made me order it because he knew he would butcher the pronunciation. 

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.

I thought Brenda would like this Country Church one. (No, Brenda, I didn't buy it for you.)

We passed a lot of pecan trees today, not so many groves, just trees along the road and in people's yards.  Georgia is famous for their pecans, but since we have been stocking up on Arizona pecans, we didn't buy any here.

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.

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.

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. 

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.