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.