Has Anyone Seen the Waterfalls?

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a GREAT weekend. I am so bummed that it's over and it's back to work tomorrow. We didn't play powerball this time so I knew it would have to happen this week.

We had a great trip to GA. Here's the brief summary of the weekend:

Fri- Brent took the day off from work and I left early at 3. I was counting the minutes all day and was getting severely antsy from 2 onward. He had the car loaded, Pippin in his riding harness, and everything ready to go. Pippin knows when something's up, so as soon as I came in he was fit to be tied because he knew we were about to go. We loaded up and hit the road at 3:30. The ride from here to Chattanooga went really quickly until we got stuck in some rush hour traffic and construction traffic there. There's something about a trip that makes us CRAVE junk food. We stopped at a gas station and bought a little bag of Cheetos, a C2 coke, some Nutter Butter's and a Reese's cup. We haven't had that much sugar/processed foods in AGES. About 20 minutes after our 'snack' we were near pass out status from the sugar crash and could hardly stay awake. A couple of wrong turns later we were cruising past the gorgeous Oceoo River (where the 1996 whitewater portion of the Olympics were hostes) and at 7:30 we arrived at our cabin. It was really cute, but right off a little road leading to other cabins. Their website had promised 3 acres of seclusion. The 3 acres were all BEHIND the house. Some front of the house seclusion would have been nice. As such, I really couldn't let Pippin run around off leash since he has no fear of cars. We unloaded the car and fired up the charcoal grill. We roasted come marshmallows over the flames and grilled some dogs. Later we checked out the hot tub and enjoyed the view while the rain started. All week Brent kept saying 'I don't care if it rains all weekend. We're just going to relax and have fun no matter what.' Guess who got his wish???

Sat- We got up bright and early and cooked a big breakfast complete with bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and biscuits. We never do that at home, so it was a lot of fun! Something about the cabin made Pippin really nervous and fidgety, but by Sat morning he would eat and was starting to get used to it. We headed out (leaving Pip at the cabin) for a 'relatively easy 30 minute hike to the most popular waterfalls in NE Georgia'. We drove forever through dirt roads, etc to get to this part of the State Park/Appalachian Trail to discover the road was closed at some point below the trailhead due to flooding damages in July. We have a history of traveling hundreds of miles to end up, for extremely odd reasons, unable to view the desired sight. Some examples: In Sept 2001 we the Boston Tea Party ship was closed because of the recent terrorist attacks. For months I had been dying to get on that boat and throw some tea in the harbor. In 2002, we drove hours out of the way to visit Crater Lake, only to be turned away due to the major forest fires they were experiencing. In 2004, portions of the Crater of the Lake National Park in Idaho were closed for renovations (anything with "Crater" in its name is a curse for me.) Anyway, I was determines to see these waterfalls. We decided it couldn't be too much further of a hike up the road to the trailhead, so we decided to start hiking up the road, in the rain. Why not? We even started out jogging. A few minutes later the doubts starting creeping in.....The walk was beautiful, we were walking up a wooded gravel road with the rushing white water next to us. We met a family and asked them how much further the waterfall trail was. They hadn't made it, they had walked 10 minutes further but their kids were tired so they turned back. A few minutes later we met a large group of pre-teens and we asked their leader how much further the waterfalls were. They hadn't made it either, and some fisherman had told them it was probably 2 more miles up the road. Huh??? Well, our spirits were crushed. I wanted to see these waterfalls more than anything. We decided that dammit, we were going to make it, no matter how far it was. We had water and energy bars and isn't this what the Appalachian trail is all about??? Perseverance. We were already thoroughly soaked so the rain didn't even bother us anymore. Miles and miles later we finally found a trailhead. Of course it wasn't marked at all and we had 3 options. Perfect. We picked one, and a few minutes later (and going under trees and other obstacles) we decided it didn't fit the 'relatively easy' description from our activities listing. So, we turned back and picked a different path. It was more gravelly, and seemed to fit the bill later. We walked, walked, and walked some more. Don't get me wrong, it was beautiful. It had rained so much our shoes were sticking in the mud and at several points we had to cross limbs like balance beams to get over the path. It was a lot of fun, but at this point we'd been walking about 2 hours and we would still have to walk back to our car! We gave ourselves a time limit and decided at that point we would turn around and walk back. Well, we never saw our waterfalls. Who really needs anyway? On the way back we made record time by running and walking. We'd run for a clip, then walk. The rain actually quit for a bit, too.

We headed back to the town of Blue Ridge and did some shopping in their cute downtown area. It has lots of neat art galleries and nice little shops. We ate "lunch" (at 4 pm) in a neat little place called the Serenity Garden Cafe. It was great! Then I bought some fudge, we visited the apple orchard and headed back to the cabin to grill out some burgers (and marshmallows) and curl up on the couch. We watched Almost Famous, which was really good.

Well, this is enough for today so I'll post about our trip back tomorrow and post some pictures!

See ya!

Rae

Friday: No exercise!!
Sat: Hiking - We estimate we hiked between 12-15 miles. Seriously!! Part of that we jogged. Then we took Pippin for a short walk that evening.
Sun: Misc light hiking around the lake (but we'll get to that tomorrow!)