Blue Ridge, Georgia

Blue Ridge is nestled in the North Georgia mountains, an area we fell in love with a couple of years ago on our first visit. One of our main goals during the first trip was to take a ride on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway that runs from the town to the Tennessee border where passengers have a couple of hours to exit the train and explore two towns.

Blue Ridge also features many antique and specialty shops throughout its downtown area.

The highlight of our first trip was the meal we had at Toccoa Riverside Restaurant. The food and atmosphere were wonderful. On a dark, cold night, the warm fire inside and trout straight from the river below were perfect. Naturally, we had to go back this year. As it usually goes, it wasn't anywhere near the same experience as our previous visit. The food was pretty good, but nothing special.


The highlight of the trip this year was seeing the beautiful fall foliage that we hit at its peak. We saw even more than expected as we rode around the area near Talking Rock, lost, and trying to figure out how to get on the right path home.

Ellijay, Georgia

Before our recent trip to Ellijay, all I knew about it was that it's home to at least one chicken processing plant. On a trip a couple of years ago, we were behind a chicken coup truck with teeny tiny cages with somewhat dead looking white chickens in them. Feathers flew everywhere, and it was really quite disturbing. The truck turned into a plant with lots of other chicken filled trucks in Ellijay.

But, thankfully, Ellijay is also home to several less gruesome and interesting places to visit. Ellijay is Georgia's apple capital, and we certainly saw a lot of apple orchards. We had researched the area and decided to check out Hillcrest Orchards that had a cute turkey waiting to greet visitors.

Hillcrest is home to a large orchard where several different types of apples are grown, including red and golden delicious, pink lady, mutsu, granny smith, honey crisp, fugi and others.

There is also a petting zoo, which I thought was pretty sad with a caged cat, a bunch of chickens and baby goats. Robert really wanted to pay the $6 fee to go in, but as someone who grew up with chickens and goats, I did not. On certain days there are wagon rides and u-pick apples available, but it was rainy and dreary the day we were there, so most of the attractions were shut down.

Inside, there were was a big bin area with all different varieties of apples to choose from and create your own custom mixed bag of apples. Apple cider donuts, cider, apple cider slushies and many more apple themed treats were also available.

After much advice and recommendations from a couple of Robert's coworkers who are from the area, we decided on the "place with the hill of fake pigs" behind it. This would actually be Poole's BBQ, and there is in fact a huge hill of fake pigs towering behind the building, which is technically know as the "Pig Hall of Fame."

We knew it was going to be a bit odd, and with the Pig-Moby-il and Taj Ma Hog, it lived up to our expectations.

The bar-be-que was pretty good, except for the fact that the bun was completely soggy, either from grease or moisture, probably because it had been prepared and wrapped in advance to save time. There were a lot of people there, and Poole's is only open Thursday through Sunday.

We ventured on to downtown Ellijay, which is a pretty quaint little area with several antique shops, some better than others.

Since it was right around Halloween, the town was decorated for the holiday.

Berry College in Rome, Georgia

We had heard that Berry College was one of the most beautiful campuses you'll ever see. I know a couple of people who went to school there but had never seen the campus, even on the rare occasion of driving through Rome the year before.

On our latest escapade to see fall foliage, we went through Rome and decided late October would be the perfect time to take a quick self-guided, driving tour through more than 26,000 acres that make up the campus.

Speaking of 26,000 acres, Berry's size makes it one of the largest campuses in the world and the largest contiguous college campus. The majority of these acres are unspoiled and undeveloped woodlands, meadows and streams, a part of which makes up a nature preserve.

Berry actually has two campuses -- the main campus and the mountain campus that's about three miles away. In 1902, Martha Berry founded the college for rural (not urban) boys who had previously had little or no education of any kind. For years, Berry only admitted this class of students. Eventually, as the school grew and Berry died, others were admitted and Berry turned into a more modern school.

Russellville Watermelon Festival

On August 15, 2009 Lori and I headed to northwest Alabama to check out the Russellville Watermelon Festival. While we were up that way we thought it'd be a good idea to see some other towns in the area. Our first stop was the tiny town of Mt. Hope, which is located on Lawrence County Highway 23 at the intersection with Lawrence County Highway 32, about a mile or two south of Alabama Highway 24.


The largest building in the town is an old cotton gin. A sign on the front indicates that it is a product of the Continental Gin Machinery Company. Continental Gin was a conglomeration of five gin producers, one of which was originally founded by Daniel Pratt, founder of the city of Prattville. Although the building appears run-down and abandoned, there was a strange noise emanating from within. Upon further investigation I noticed a rather large and newer forklift inside with oxygen canisters on a pallet inside.


While looking over the building I heard a noise coming from the roof. I looked up at the hole in the side of the building and out flew a hawk. A minute later another one flew out. Lori said she even saw a third fly away. Makes me wonder if the noise I heard was some machinery running in the building, or them protecting their nest.


Neighboring the gin is the defunct Gilbreath Grocery building. Painted on the front facade are two bolls of cotton and what appears to be a bail of cotton. Apparently there's a resident artist in the community as the buildings "downtown" have murals painted on them as well.


"Downtown" Mt. Hope is made up of a post office and an apparently abandoned building. Someone has painted some doors on the front of the building as well as signs for what was, presumably, the original occupants of the space. On one end is Sibley's Barber Shop, where haircuts are just 50 cents. The largest tenant is Dukeminier's General Merchandise. A sign at the top of the wall reads "Mt. Hope 1912". It's funny that someone went to all that trouble to paint the doors and signs in a town with a population of maybe 20 people. Remarkably several cars passed through in the ten minutes we were there.

Across the highway from the large gin is what appeared to be another part of the gin. Across the roof of one of the buildings is painted "Mt. Hope" in large yellow letters.


After Mt. Hope we headed to the Watermelon Festival in Russellville. It had everything you'd expect from a festival: car show, antique tractor show, art and crafts, food vendors, etc. It had everything except for actual watermelon. We saw a few people walking around with a huge chunk of fruit, but never found where they got it. We got there a little earlier than we thought we would and didn't feel like waiting around in the heat and crowd long enough to get lunch from one of the vendors.


On the way back to the car I saw this "mailbox". I had never seen anything like it, and thought it would come in handy as I have a few frayed and damaged flags that need to be respectfully destroyed. Lori and I plan on visiting Russellville again, so we'll have to remember to bring the flags.

We hit the road headed north toward the Shoals area and just had to get a shot of this drive-in sign just north of Russellville on US Highway 43. The theater was operational when we visited and they were playing films that had opened on a couple of weeks before. There is another drive-in in Childersburg on US Highway 280 and it plays new movies. I never would have thought that drive-ins would be so up-to-date in their selections.

The next town we visited was Tuscumbia, birthplace of the deaf and blind Helen Keller. Tuscumbia has a very nice old train depot. As you can tell by the trash can and handicap parking sign it is still in use. I didn't go in, but it's probably some sort of museum now.

Next came Muscle Shoals. For some reason Muscle Shoals is a very popular place for recording music. Many hits have been recorded in Muscle Shoals or the nearby city of Sheffield. FAME (Florence Alabama Music Enterprises) Studio was the original recording studio in the area. It was first located on the second floor of a building in dowtown Florence, right above a pharmacy (that building has since been torn down and is a parking lot). It was moved to another location, then to the location seen in the picture, after the original founders split up.

After the original members of FAME split up two of them formed Muscle Shoals Sound and setup shop in a little building on Jackson Highway in Sheffield.

In 1978 Muscle Shoals Sound moved into a new studio next to the Tennessee River. The building was originally used by the Navy Reserve but had been abandoned prior to being used as a studio. The building is now home to Cypress Moon Studios.

Just up the road and across the Tennessee River from Tuscumbia is Florence, home of the University of North Alabama (TUNA), and Dale's Restaurant. Dale's is famous throughout Alabama for their steak marinade. Dale's started in the cellar of an apartment building in downtown Birmingham and grew from there. From what I can tell the location in Florence is the only one left open.

Lori and I had lunch at Rosie's Cantina in downtown Florence. The food was alright, but was way overpriced.

After lunch we headed next door to Trowbridge's Ice Cream Bar. It has been there since before World War II (or was it World War 11?) (1918 to be exact) and serves sandwiches and ice cream. I had a scoop of cookies-n-cream and Lori had their famous orange-pineapple ice cream, which has been on the menu since the restaurant was first opened.

After ice cream we explored downtown Florence. It's definitely one of the best downtowns around. It was very clean, no crumbling buildings, and most all storefronts appeared to be occupied. The Shoals theater resides in Florence and, of course, has a great neon sign. I found it interesting that next to the courthouse is a handicap parking space complete with parking meter.