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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Montepulciano Tuscany Wanderlust in Wonderland.

A train ride from Roma got us to the station in the town neighboring Montepulciano (our destination).

Montepulciano is a small, medieval town sitting on a mountain-top overlooking incredible views of the Tuscan valley below.

We meandered-about awhile looking for a way to get up the mountain. We even started to walk up that town’s hill for a bit until we realized that our One Ton Tomatoes (back-packs) would kill us.

Well we found the bus stop but being the “afternoon” (a kind of siesta time in Italy just not called “siesta”) every thing was closed. So there were no bus tickets to be had. We finally (after waiting) found the bus, paid a bit extra for our tickets from the driver and got a scenic tour all the way to Montepulciano. The great big bus was like a Japanese monster compared to the other tiny micro machines that made up the common Italian vehicle.The driver weaved through the tiny streets like a real pro, and delivered us to the main hotel in Montepulciano at the bottom of the town’s hill. We asked around for directions, consulted our guide books and read signs to find that the tourist office was at the top of the huge hill before us. We survived (whew!) the lengthy and exhausting walk up the hill (though the sites were nice) to find one of the most amazing views of the Tuscan land-scape and also to find a little sign at the address of the tourist office stating that it had moved (somewhere near the bottom of the hill we just walked up). We relax , take pictures , have a tiny picnic eating some of Wanderluster DC’s stock of junk food. and head back down to the tourist office to inquire about places to stay. We found the tourist office after the walk back down and went in to pick their brains for places to stay. A fellow back-packing couple were in the line ahead of us, and we listened as they told them and us that there were no rooms to be had in Montepulciano and we would have to catch a bus (the last one) to some neighboring town so that we maybe could rent some shabby hovel they knew of there, but we would have to hurry. I couldn’t help but to get mental images from Lewis Carol’s “Alice in Wonderland” “No Room! , No Room!” Shouts the Mad Hatter”. Now this information was from the “Official Tourist Office” ; So, we beat and tired Wanderlusters, who rarely trust anything “official” and are quite accustom to the ramblings of mad people, decide to ignore them. We easily pushed away momentary visions in our mind of 3 worn out backpackers camping in an alley-way with bottles of wine and sleep-sheet lingto, and we wander (just like Alice) about a block down a random street and effortlessly secure a very comfortable and affordable tripple with our choice of bath, view or whatnot. for the night. We wanted to catch the other back-packing couple who had been sent on the Mad Hatter’s (tourist office’s) goose chase, but we were moving too slow at that point as they had hustled to the bus stop as they had been instructed to by the hatter .. Throughout our stay in Montepulciano, we occasionally stopped by the “Official Tourist Office” or the Mad Hatter’s lair and constantly confirmed, as a kind of inside joke, that the travel office would almost always convey wrong information about everything. Now we 3 wondering idiots in wonderland had, without trying, developed a workable system for getting around, which was coming in a bit more handy in Montepulciano than it did in Roma. I had 3-4 years of Spanish in College about 8 years ago so I could read Italian for the most part (as it is similar on paper) but I would retreat to my Spanish if I tried to speak more than basic words which didn’t do me any good at all. That’s where Wanderluster Fred came in. He had spent a summer in Italy a few years back and had a fair use of the very basic spoken lingo. Where neither of us could communicate that’s where Wanderluster David came in . He would bumble up and say in plain-English “can I get that?” The way it worked out usually the three of us together could communicate with the locals.

Montepulciano was wine country, and we lovingly participated in the enjoyment of the fine local vintage with our various picnics in the parks, hill-sides, and restaurants of the beautiful little hill town.. The Let’s Go had recommended the Ristorante Cittino, and I just have to say YUM!. Truly a wonderment in this wonderland. Yes these were some of the best meals I had had during my entire trip to Italy. We had an excellent meal It was quite a deal too. After dinner we were enticed into another little local cafe by a beautiful staff and yummy looking deserts. Quite yummy with wine and this gave us even more of that rejuvenating relaxation we Wanderlusters needed after our previous evenings at the heart of Roma’s night life. It was here that we were charmed by fine wines, cheese-cakes, and the relaxing demure of the town into staying another day in lieu of trying to get out on Easter Sunday. The inn (Albergho de Borgehise) at Montepulciano was relaxing. It wasn’t noisy at all ,as Roma was, and the innkeeper was very friendly conveying understanding, patience and comradery as we jokingly struggled with each other’s language. His English was much better than our Italian. So after the comfortable rest we three idiots were energized and ready to live up to our name. We had seen a flyer at one of the restaurants telling us that there was the annual horse race ( Corse de Camili) in the neighboring town (Aquaviva). Knowing there were no busses, we made a little sign with the word Aquaviva on it and set out trying to hitch to the horse races as there were no busses running on Easter Sunday. We walked for a while toward Aquaviva with our little sign, befriending all the neighborhood dogs as they barked at us from their fences on the way past the neighborhood homes. Well no one picked us up. And we weren’t about to walk 6km to a horse race we would be late for anyway. “On second thought lets not go to Aquaviva Tis a silly place”.So instead we opted for wine and food again at the Ristorante Cittino and then people watching at another well situated Montepulciano cafe. We hit the sack early that night to be fully recharged for our attack on Florence.

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Sanibel Island really needs a pied piper to get rid of all the greed-ridden rats and huge infestation. Frankly I hated the place!
Now, Sanibel is an island just over a causeway out of Fort Myers Florida. My family had hyped this place, but I don’t really tend to like the same spots they do, but alas I went anyway. I not only didn’t like Sanibel, I fracking hated it!
Now you can pay 6 dollars to drive onto the island so you can pay to park every hour (I even saw the Sanibel cops giving a parking ticket to a wee Motor scooter, now there’s a vehicle that is so taxing on your parking resources, feh).
It was so infested with humans that you could have had a better beach and nature experience in a Japanese subway with an ocean poster on the wall. Oh and The greed-ridden owners of the island have instituted a 2-dollar an hour charge for all parking on the place. And let me tell ya, this place, well, she aint all that! I guess its popular to some because you can lay your beach blanket down within 2 and a half inches of some hob-snobby swine errr something, or just because it has been hyped too much. But this travel site isn’t anyone’s Chamber of Commerce.
Sanibel is not a place for an outdoorsman. It is a place for city folks to go and gawk at the sad and half-assed remains of what once was obviously a beautiful place in nature.
Frankly I’ve seen parks and islands, and beauty spots in Florida that make Sanibel Island look like a New Jersey slum after a sewage truck explosion. And those were either free or really really cheap by comparison.
I guess like some wise folks have said before. “If its popular, its wrong”. And that’s what Sanibel Island was to me, wrong. You could barely even get through the place. Lovers key, was a glory by comparison. Go there for your Ft. Myers beach action.
I even went through the National wildlife refuge there. Now as a rule, I love my national parks and forests, state parks, and state forests. They are some of my favorite places in the world. But alas this park was in the Sanibel tradition of greed greed greed. I paid 5 bucks (a high fee for entrance to a NWR) so I could drive through a torn up Mangrove swamp. Yep, that was it, that was their amazing park about 6 miles of Mangrove swamp. Nice, meh, but alas, not impressive wildlife wise, though you could at least pull over to the side and park and look (I’m amazed they didn’t try to charge me again for that, I’m sure its in the works.). Na, this park isn’t very nice either, Not when I’ve taken my bike through swamps like these for free and seen more wildlife and beauty than this place holds. Of course these places I like were not really “where the people tend go in multitudes”. I guess the numbers are good for the national parks system, so that’s a plus.
I saw “city folks” fascinated with this bird or that one, or by the fact that they saw a mullet, but guys, Florida has so much more beautiful things to offer! But forever more (unless of course women are involved), I will leave the façade remains of nature called Sanibel Island to the yupsters and hob-snobbies, and will not morn her at all when nature’s pied-piper called a huge hurricane thoroughly cleans her.

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