Vogel State Park – Fall Hike

Autumn:

Crisp Air.

Harvest Time.

Fall Leaves.

Time to get out of Atlanta and go “Leaf- peeping”

The Former Lumpkin County Courthouse is now home to the Dahlonega Gold Museum

First stop is Dahlonega. Flags and crosses honoring veterans line the streets leading into the town of 5,000 residents. Central to the historic downtown is the Dahlonega Gold Museum. Housed in the original Lumpkin County Courthouse – the oldest courthouse in Georgia, the museum details the history of the first gold rush in U.S. history. (more…)

Providence Canyon State Park in Lumpkin, Georgia

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Providence Canyon State Park

We took a trip to Providence Canyon State Park, near Lumpkin, Georgia a few weeks ago.  I had read about it in a GA state park brochure and was impressed by the pictures. Calling it the Little Grand Canyon I thought we needed to investigate this treasure in Georgia. According to MapQuest, the park is a good 2.5 hours away so we hadn’t made it down there. When we were at Callaway Gardens, it was only 1.5 hours away so we decided to go there.

Hiking down the quarter-mile descent, verdant shrubs bordered the path until we were greeted by rivers of red clay at the base of the canyon floor. We tiptoed around the rivulets toward Fingers 4 & 5, which according to the park ranger, were the most impressive. (more…)

24 Hours in Kentucky – Mammoth Cave National Park & Louisville

We started our Mother-Daughter trip by first going up to Louisville, KY. Since we were literally planning this trip two days beforehand, we had little time for extensive tourist research. I also have to say up front that I can’t find about half of the pictures we took.

We did notice Mammoth Cave National Park was on the way so we booked tickets for a guided cave tour. Again, I wanted to go there, but not actually go in a cave. Thing 2 convinced me otherwise. We bought our tickets online for the 1:00 Historic Cave Tour. The next morning we left Atlanta around 6 am so we’d get there about an hour before the tour began.

Mammoth Cave National Park

Gathering with the group outside the visitor center, the park rangers explained that parts of the tour could be claustrophobic. In actuality, it really wasn’t claustrophobic at all. They went into detail that there would be a few tight squeezes, but it was well-lit inside. Thing 2 and I stayed near the front of the 40 or so people. The other guide was trained to get people out of there if they had any problems. (more…)

Louisville, St. Louis & Memphis Itinerary

It was spring break and we had nowhere to go. At that time, my elementary school-age children were in two different schools with two different spring breaks. Thing 2 wanted to go somewhere for just a few days. We got out the Atlas. She wanted to go to Arkansas. I wanted to go to Missouri. We ended up doing a really fun trip to Mammoth Cave NP, Louisville, St. Louis and driving through northwestern Arkansas to Memphis – all in four days.

Thursday (more…)