Yondering Across North Georgia

October 10 - 11, 2009

We left Saturday morning headed to Baby Land Cabbage Patch Hospital in Cleveland. Georgia. Getting a late start Luke was immediately hungry and wanted lunch. We stopped to get a cache at fruit and barbecue stand at the intersection of Highway 52 and Long Branch Road east of Dahlonega. I think Almost Famous Barbecue could become famous!! It was mighty good. They made real French Fries from Irish potatoes right there in thegrease! Of course they were also selling mountain apples, boiled peanuts, and all kinds of jellies, jams, and fruit juices. We found Baby Land just has we left it many years before when we took Hannah and Luke. Isaac went in saw a Cabbage Patch Baby be born via an "easy-ottimy", asked where were the boy toys, and proclaimed he was ready to go. It is obvious that Isaac was not impressed by Xavier Roberts’s creations. We continued our eastward trek to Tallulah Gorge. We stayed at a new resort hotel called The Lodge. Very nice accommodations. Our children were impressed with the suspension bridge down in the Gorge. I was much more impressed with the fact that we walked all of those steps down into the gorge and walked back out. However, later in the evening we visited to most exciting place visited all day. Goats on the Roof is a general store of sorts between Clayton and Tallulah Falls on Highway 411. The attraction here is that there are really goats running around on the roof of the buildings. There are also chickens up there, but the goats walking over the rope bridge and eating food sent up little conveyer belts was just too cool. It was so cool that we went back Sunday morning and partook in roasting marshmallows in the early morning coolness. Sunday morning found me sore legged as we rolled out of bed to start our way back to Calhoun. Our goal was to find a Pumpkin Farm without going back to Burt’s Farm in Dawsonville. Bad idea!! Garminey got lost and then we got lost!!! We found a pumpkin farm, but we were not impressed so we struck out across the mountains for Dawsonville and Burt’s. Before this leg of the trip we did see the petro glyphs at Track Rock near Blairsville. Our route carried us across Blood Mountain and the Appalachians Trial. We arrived at Burt’s at 4:05 with about four thousand other people as another four thousand folks attempted to leave with their treasure trove of pumpkins and gourds of different size, shape, and color that were headed to elaborate fall displays in front years, doorways, and store fronts. We joined in with most of north Georgia in the fall fun, took a hay ride, bought a bunch of stuff destined to rot in the front year, and went went to Amicalola Falls. Once again we hiked off down into a gorge to see a water fall ad tumble over rocks. Once again we had to walk up whole bunch of steps wondering why we ever walked down. Thus ended our weekend yondering trip!!!