Georgia On My Mind

We are all in this together

Hugh and Veronica, camping neighbors at Sweetwater Creek, recommended several camping areas, Vogel State Park and Unicoi. We are so glad they took the time and suggested we visit here. For us both turned out to be great destination’s.

We landed at Vogel SP next to Tony and Mel, they occupied the site directly across from us. God is giving us great neighbors. Tony and I both felt the pain of sporadic 3G Internet service. How did Lewis and Clark ever get anything done? Mel, like Deb is the one who instigated the whole idea of getting into the woods with a camper. Until a couple of months ago Tony’s idea of camping is a Hilton credit card. Being a good grandpa, he’s in it for Mel and the grandkids. What a good sport. Tony is more than a good sport. Like me he enjoys acquiring all the cool doohickeys that go along with travel trailers, and motor homes. Rock on Tony!

To do’s

The first order of business was to fetch our mail in Blairsville. For the most part we figured out the USPS General Delivery Mail process, and the mail service provided by Americas Mailbox is going well. Second on the list was to defrost the fridge. RV fridges work differently than your home 110 volt types. It can run on either LP gas or 110 volts. The cooling fins are located inside the fridge section, the cooling effect is created by an ammonia something or other. Well anyway a lot of frost built up and it was working harder than it should be, and started to growl at us. We bought a bag of ice, emptied a storage bin and Deb went to work. “I got this” and as a result I got a great salad out of the deal. We have a good gig going.

I don’t do many food pics, but this was worthy.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Georgia’s Vogel State Park was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on land owned by a lumber company. We toured the parks CCC museum. Nancy the volunteer interpreter was great, and her obvious passion for the CCC boys, and the work they did was over the top. Vogel state park offered some great hiking trails.

CCC barracks: note beds are head to toe. Health reasoning.

CCC mess hall. The boys ate well, about 4,000 calories a day.

Mountain Trails

Our iPhones have health trackers built into them. Looking at the month to month results there is a large variance from MN to FL to GA. Notice FL is flatter than MN. We are loving Georgia.

We met Ronny and Cody at a stream crossing on Bear Hair Trail. Cody is fourteen and has logged over 7,000 miles with Ronny. Funny thing we met Ronny and Cody a second time on Brasstown Bald. Brasstown Bald, what an odd name. Byron Herbert Reece (Local talent) was an American author of poetry and novels, and he had a trail dedicated to his memory.

Mountain Crossings

On our way to Dahlonega we stopped at Mountain Crossings. Built in 1934 the stone building is the only building directly on the Appalachian Trail.

A tradition is to launch you hiking shoes into a tree.

This becomes a problem, loaded branches fall down.

Named Neels Gap after the engineer who built the mountain road

Dahlonega

Dahlonega was a fun town. We toured the Gold Museum, interesting fact: The Georgia Gold Rush was the second significant gold rush in the United States and the first in Georgia, and overshadowed the previous rush in North Carolina. It started in1829 near Dahlonega. By the early 1840s, gold became difficult to find. The miners moved west when gold was found in the Sierra Nevada in 1848, starting the California Gold Rush.