From Amicalola Falls State Park

Yesterday, I went to Amicalola Falls State Park, I didn’t camp there, I just dropped in for a day visit. I ate some food at their food bar in the lodge and went to see the Alaska String Band. I’ve been hanging around the old homelands, and will likely hang here until the Hellidays are over with, then I hope to hook up the Oyster Can of Adventure and ramble Florida some more.

Now the Alaska String band is this family of musicians from , of all places, Alaska, and they shared stories and songs from that area of the country. Now they do a variety of music, including old-time, folk, swing and other styles. I think the ones I enjoyed the most were the songs they did about the stories, histories and lands of Alaska. They all are talented with their instruments, but the Alaska tales brought in something different to this fella from the North Georgia Mountains who isn’t going to be impressed with just more bluegrass or gospel stuff (as those are done to death in my homelands). They are full time traveling musicians and you can check them out at http://www.alaskastringband.net/ . You might even book them for your church or hall if you are looking for something nice to feature to visitors.

I walked up the falls trail to check out the beauty and the lovely autumn leaves.

From Amicalola Falls State Park

Plus the trail is great exercise!

Amicalola Falls is a park between Dahlonega and Dawsonville Georgia and is the access to point to Springer mountain the start of the Appalachian Trail.

It features an incredible water falls, a lodge, many trails, scenic wonderments

From Amicalola Falls State Park

and fun stuff to do. The only thing I don’t like about the park is their campground, as for some reason, way back when, someone decided to put the campground half-way up the mountain and there is a 25% grade to pull an RV up. This grade would put my teeth on edge If I were in my pulling my Oyster Can with my  Mule (the mule is nothing to write home about, its a Mule with no name because someday I’ll have to shoot it) . I hope to upgrade my tow-vehicle someday, as I’m not putting the mule and Oyster Can on the Blue-ridge parkway either. But I hate debt. Debt is one of the biggest detriments to the kind of freedom that I’m working to design, and the mule has managed many adventures so far and is paid for.
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Dahlonega Georgia Gold Rush Festival in the North Georgia Mountains

All join hands and circle to the South let a little country in yer mouth !

Yep, hell yeah by god, it was Gold Rush days in Dahlonega Georgia in the North Georgia Mountains.

Now for folks who don’t know, Dahlonega Georgia was the site of the first gold rush in the states. The Gold Rush Festival celebrates this fact, and has tons of booths selling folk-art, and lots of country type events.

From gold-rush-dahlonega

Now this particular fall festival is nothing new to this old fellow who continues his haunting of his old stomping grounds. But yes, I chose to attend the gold rush days festival for a bit this season simply because I was bored.
I cranked up my wind-up-toy-of-adventure (my 50cc scooter) and rode downtown Dahlonega Georgia to see some of the festival and see if anything had really changed.

I even got in town in time to catch the festival Parade which was even more boring than it use to be. Ya see they have this huge section of “little miss everythings”, yes, every little girl of all ages seems to have a car and a tierra in the Gold Rush parade. Oh there went “Little Miss Once Petted a Kitty“, oh and

From gold-rush-dahlonega

Little Miss likes Saturday morning Cartoons. I think the only  “little miss” that was missing was Little Miss Fetus (though I’m sure some pregnant mom with be waving on a float next year). They had also put hordes more people from the local military college into the parade. Yes, I think they even had the Junior ROTC kids and their shoe-shine boys in the college section. The college use to just have the band and the main drill team. It took forever, I got bored.

From gold-rush-dahlonega

But it was something to do on a Saturday in Dahlonega. There were hordes of people there (I didn’t see many locals), but I did get to do some people watching, and see a few cute girls.

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Well take a piece of t-backer - spiter err on the wall and until next time folks that is all.

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North Georgia Mountains The Indian Summer Festival in Suches, Georgia

To some it is a secret land in the valley above the clouds, as for me, I call it my old stomping grounds (as I grew up in these hills), but nevertheless, it needs a write up on my travel pages.

From Indian Summer Festival

Yes, its lovely October in the North Georgia Mountains, the leaves begin to change, the feel of autumn is in the air, and its time for the Harvest Festivals.

From Indian Summer Festival

So I headed out over the mountain to the little town of Suches, Georgia to the Indian Summer Festival, that is thrown to support the local school in Suches, and the students and teachers and family folks all get together in the small community to put on the festival.

From Indian Summer Festival

Now Suches Georgia is a very small unincorporated mountain town at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I began my festival jaunt by watching the auctioneer for a bit as he sold this and that, and I continued to watch all kinds of neat little events.

I opted for a good old fashioned cheeseburger, but they had BBQ, funnel cakes, and other goodies.

From Indian Summer Festival

Now the Indian Summer Festival had all sorts of mountain crafts, and some of them were cute. Now for me, all I wanted to take home was the cute gal who was selling mini-tea-pots and hand-bags (hey I can dream can’t I ?)… so I didn’t opt for any of the goodies on sale.

They also were holding several raffles, including a hand-made quilt raffle and one for a hunting riffle.

From Indian Summer Festival

So along with visiting folks, I rambled through looked at booths, watched the turkey shoot and also did some toe-tapping to the music.

Yep, there was a bit of pickin’ and grinnin’ (bluegrass), as well as a group of young cloggers from the school, and a group doing random stuff with drums.

Some of the other goodies that I caught included seeing the wee kids doing a sort of Indian Play in their little Indian costumes, and they did a little history lesson on the Cherokee Indians. Oh and I caught the crafts display hall as well, but didn’t buy any raffles or pies.

There are more pictures of the event at my Picasa album so you can go there if you want to check them out. You can also click the images in this article to view larger pics (links open in a new window).

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