Ellijay

Ellijay was beautiful.  The Apple Festival was incredible.  I will say, for any of you wanting to go in the future, it is best to get there EARLY.  We got there around 9:30, and it was so incredibly nice.  As the day went on, it got more and more packed.  Around 1, I began to feel like a sardine.  The festival had some really neat items.  Everything from adorable monogrammed signs, to doggy hankerchiefs, to hats, to carnival food....

Speaking of food.  The caramel apples?  To die for.  They peeled, cored, and sliced them there, poured caramel over them....oh. my. word. y'all.  So so good.  The festival was amazing.

This was a mountain with a tiny cross on it.  

After we left the festival, we were headed to an apple orchard.  The apple orchard was beautiful.  What we could see of it. We were all geared up to pick the apples from trees.  Boy, were we ready.  Unfortunately, after traipsing across a field, across a street, across another field, and waiting in line for about 15 minutes, we read a sign.  The sign said "No apples on trees.  Apples in Bins." So...we were expected to pay $2 to enter...to pick apples out of bins?  You mean, like we could do for free at Walmart?  Lol.  But it was all part of the experience...and something to laugh about.  This would completely be our luck.  

See...pretty right? 

Then, we were off to see the waterfall at Amicalola Falls State park.  Y'all, this was beautiful.  Completely beautiful.  If you ever have heard mine and Mom's Tallulah Falls hiking story, you'd wonder how we managed through this one.  Well, not well.  But this was much more stairs, which was doable, and less climbing over slippery rocks.  Going down was fine.  Going back up?  Well....we learned how out of shape we truly are.

We made it a majority of the way back up.  Mama started struggling with her knee, and Rheba wound up driving down an "Authorized Vehicles Only" driveway to pick us up.  Then, laughably, we found out that there was a parking area RIGHT by the Falls....so our hiking was not necessarily necessary.  Eh, oh well, we needed the exercise, and the laughs it brought on.  The view was incredible.