Mini-vaca, day three

Thursday the Crazies packed up and left our free hotel digs, and drove through Chattanooga back into north Georgia. Our destination was a Georgia State Park, Cloudland Canyon.  I had never been there - a friend recommended it to me as a great place to go.  And she was right.

Cloudland Canyon is in a town with the charming name of Rising Fawn.  Isn't that a great name?  (BTW - we passed the exit for New England, GA.)  It was a scenic drive to the park, and we stopped in the visitor's center as soon as we got there.  We were told of a nice trail we could take with great view and waterfalls at the bottom.  "It's only twelve hundred steps!" the woman said cheerily.  This sounded like my cup of tea, so off we went.

Here's the top of the trail - DH, Curly and Moe are checking out the view.

And the view is gorgeous.  I wish I could see it in the fall.  (I found some fall pics here.)

I had no idea this place existed.  It's really pretty.  There are cabins to rent there and other things to do, like geo-caching, and Frisbee golf.

So we headed down the trail.  The trail was listed as six tenths of a mile, not too bad I thought.  I have to be careful going down things on account of my severe lack of balance, but I was ok in this part.  (My fatness contributes too.) The boys and DH went ahead - I am slow.

We got to a marker that said "Waterfalls - .3 Mile ahead.  Caution: Trail is extremely steep."  The trail seemed ok, so we plunged forward.  There had been a few sets of stairs at this point, but I was fine.

Then we got to a big rock overhang and the start of more stairs.

And I looked down.  I couldn't see where the end was.  AHEM.  Nope, not doing that.  No way, no how. Uh-uh.

I made DH send the boys back up to get my camera and let them take pictures of the waterfalls and the view from the bottom.  (This meant that Curly and Moe had to do this climb twice.  Hee.)  (DH is not good with the camera.)  I waited under the big rock until they came up for the camera, then I went back up the trail to find the car and start the AC going.  FYI - the temp was in the mid-90's.

It appears there were a lot more stairs.

They plunged down into the woods.

Look up!

Look out!  Pretty view.

And more stairs.

And here is one of the waterfalls.  Wait - where's the water.  What the heck??

Here is another supposed waterfall.  Also dry.  I know the water exists, because I had seen this picture.  But there had been little rain this summer. so there was only a trickle of water.  Oh, well.

The Stooges and DH returned to the car, sweating and exhausted.  I later saw that the trail has 600 stair steps.  Hmm.  Me thinks I made the right decision to stop where I did and come back.  As it was, I was pretty out of breath.  Curly (who is in the best shape) said "I think I burned 600 calories there."  Whew!

Anyhow, we got into the air conditioned car and headed back to Chez Crazy without incident.  Overall, a nice quickie, three day vacation.  I was supposed to visit my mother on Friday, but she ended up getting sick, so I stayed home and read the rest of "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest", which was quite good.

I didn't get much tatting done, but plan to finish some things today. Really I do.

Stay cool....