Dinata Misovec

My friend Mabel told me they had camped at Talullah Gorge last week. I recalled passing by the state park on our way to and from Big Creek and suggested to Andy that we stop there for the night. It was only two hours away from our cozy campsite behind the Cracker Barrel.  We had time so he agreed.

It is a beautiful drive through north Georgia. It gets even more beautiful when approaching Tallulah Falls. Our first stop was the full campground.  We were lucky – it was Sunday and most folks were leaving by the one o’clock check-out time.  We picked our site (near the restroom) before the occupants had left.  http://gastateparks.org/TallulahGorge

Then we headed to the visitor center for a look around before taking the rim trail. I got a kick out of the bench out front but did not sit down to try it out.

The visitor center building architecture was interesting in itself and there were some nice displays inside.  We watched an excellent short film about the history of the gorge and the formation of the park. Then we headed out the back door to the rim trail along the gorge. Read all about it on my favorite website, Wikipedia.

The falls were large and beautiful, but we were so high above them, they looked small.

The mountain laurel was in full bloom. One shrub, out in the sunshine, was overloaded with huge clusters of pinkness.

This is Tallulah Falls, falling over the dam.  We were shocked to see that we had driven right over the waterfall many times and never knew it was right under the highway bridge.

If my connection from the sign to the flowers is correct, these are pink grass orchids. But, after looking it up, I say it is a Birdfoot Violet.  Pretty either way.

This is the suspension Bridge over Hurricane Falls.  According to the sign, the gorge is 330 feet at that point.

I zoomed in for a better look.

This is one of the towers used to suspend a tightrope across the gorge for Karl Wallenda to walk across it as a publicity stunt in 1970.

There is a wonderful view down the gorge from that spot. The gorge is about two miles long and a thousand feet deep.  That dark rock jutting out on the left of the river is supposed to be the face of a woman, but it looks more like a bear or dog to me.

After our hike, we drove to Clayton to eat at Henry’s.  We had stopped there before and I don’t remember being very impressed with the home cooking.  This time I scarfed down two plates of vegetables.  Here is Scamp tucked in for the night.

We went over to visit with our neighbors, Jo and Dan, who turned out to be from Merritt Island.  They have a big ole lab “Ozzie” with them.  Ozzie used my feet as a pillow. We plan to stay in touch and will visit them at the beach sometime in the future.

The dogwood is in full bloom in Tallulah Gorge.  They are all over the campground.

The park issues one hundred passes a day to walk down into the gorge. That is on days they are not releasing water.  Andy said he is not ready for the long staircase down into the gorge.  As much as I wanted to go down there, that was a relief to me. We slept soundly.