Living in Atlanta, Andrew and I love to take advantage of being so close to the mountains in the fall. We were ready to get away from the city for a weekend, and chose a get-away to see the fall foliage.
We started out Saturday morning (after getting my H1N1 flu vaccine), heading north up 400. We've gone this way before, but made a turn we hadn't made before - toward Dawsonville & Amicalola Falls. I've always wanted to go, but thought it was a lot farther away. Not a bad drive, but we did have some bad weather. It spit rain on us all the way up. We decided to pull in anyway for a picnic. After finding a covered shelter, we unloaded and started making our sandwhiches. A quick glance over to Andrew had me looking at a daddy long legs on his neck waaay too close to his face. Eeeeek! Back to the car to eat there. Perfect timing too, because the rain stopped while we ate. We drove on up to the bottom of the trail up to the falls. We weren't in the right shoes, but managed to get far enough along to get a beautiful view.
The stream at the bottom of the trail up to the falls.
Amicalola Falls
After finishing up at the falls, we found a cute little pumpkin patch. It was Halloween - we HAD to stop! :o)
Holding our baby pumpkin
After the pumpkin patch, we drove about 10 miles. We saw many signs for apple orchards. I love apples! Andrew was concerned we were stopping too frequently (3 stops in about 15 miles), but it ended up being our last for a while. They weren't letting anyone pick apples because of the weather, but we did pick some out from the baskets - Pink Lady for me and Granny Smith for Andrew. Very crisp and delicious. We headed back to their parlor where we saw they were selling apple fritters. It was the best apple fritter either of us had ever eaten.
Warm apple fritter with vanilla ice cream - perfect!!
Back on the road - at the top of a mountain on the Appalachian Trail. A 3rd grade teacher from South Carolina was nice enough to take our picture.
The sun came out long enough for a picture that really shows all the colors!
We stopped in Clayton at the downtown there - it was quaint and not as touristy as some of the other towns we'd driven through, so we spent some time there stretching our legs. We ended up finding a few good Christmas presents and decided it was a small town we'd like to spend more time in later. Maybe a cabin rental up there next fall??
On to South Carolina - we drove through Clemson. They had just finished Homecoming football game, so we didn't see much of the campus. What we did see was enough to say that yes, it was a place I'd live. Andrew likes to look at all the universities we drive by to see if it's a place we could live. It looked like a good size college town. Advantage - distance to Greenville (our stop for the night.) Disadvantage - they're school colors are ORANGE (ick) and purple.
We drove straight to the hotel - it was dark, rainy, and we weren't familiar with where we were going. Got in, watched some college football, and called it an early night. Perfect!
The next morning, waking up refreshed after the extra hour of sleep, we had a delicious breakfast buffet. Andrew navigated us back to downtown and we found Falls Park. It was a beautiful day, so we took many pictures before walking around some of the shops. Cute place!
We needed to get back to Atlanta for my pregnancy yoga class, so we didn't get to see as much as we'd like. Another place to put on our "let's come back" list! :o) It was a great weekend vacation and we both returned refreshed; ready to face the week.
