We just returned from our vacation to Georgia. The weather was cold and overcast the first evening which was Sunday, March 30th. We got our camp site set up and had dinner and sat around the campfire and went to bed. It was cold let me tell ya. Living in Florida has really spoiled us. Monday we hiked the Bear Hair Gap Trail, which is 4.1 miles to the top of one of the Blood Mountain foot hills. We went up about 600 feet elevation on this hike and that was an eye opener. Again, Florida has spoiled us, we are use to hiking more miles than that, but not with a 600 foot change in elevation thrown in the mix. We are use to flat hiking. We did it though and the view was worth it all. Pictures just don’t show how beautiful the scenery was from the top. Makes you just want to sit there for hours and take it all in. On our way down it started to drizzle some. We passed a mound of rocks in a tree trunk, very interesting and nothing around to explain what it was all about, but we guessed it was just a way of other hikers to say they’d been there and done that… so we also each chose a rock and put ours there with all the others. I thought that was pretty cool. You’ll see some pics of that in the gallery. By the time we got back to our tent area, it was raining harder and so we just hung out in the tent for 20 minutes or so and then we were able to make dinner and clean up and sit around the campfire for awhile before going to bed, not knowing this was going to be one heck of a night. Rain kept coming off and on all night and about 4:30 in the morning we had to leave the tent and sleep the rest of the night in the car due to our tent leaking. Tuesday we spent most of the day cleaning up and going into a local town to buy a tarp to put over the tent and a few other things. The sun actually came out that day for awhile and it was just what we needed for our tent to dry out. We cooked dinner and and relaxed by the campfire before bed time. Wednesday was also a very nice day and the sun was out so we went around and hiked to about 3 different waterfalls (De Soto, upper and lower falls, Helton Creek Falls and Anna Ruby Falls). We also went into Helen and walked around the main street and looked at all the shops and had a late lunch there. This is a very cute little town and would have liked to have had more time there. Thursday was overcast again and cold, real cold. We went to Brass Town Bald but as we went up the mountain the clouds were so thick we only had about 15 foot visibility in front of us, so needless to say, we didn’t even bother getting out of the car and going to the lookout. We went back to our campsite and had lunch and found the weather forecast for that night and Friday and decided we’d had enough of the cold and wet and packed up and came on home. That was our trip. We really had a great time and loved the mountains and the change of scenery and will certainly go back again. As usual though, it’s always good to be home!!!
The home of Robert, Stephanie, Devin, and Matthew