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.