Re-Visiting The Northeast Georgia Mountains

The gristmill at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center

Fuji X-H1 camera, Fujinon XC 16-50 f3.5-5.6 OIS-II lens

In the late afternoon of July third, after a mostly uneventful trip, we pulled into Culohee Campground near Toccoa.  I say uneventful, unless you count a lot of nailbiting. There's quite a difference between pulling a 20-foot travel trailer with a half-ton pickup and pulling a 35-foot fifth-wheel with a one-ton diesel truck with a long wheelbase. It was much more intense than I had expected.

The camp is a really nice place and the owner and his wife were friendly and helpful. And the price was right. Our space backed up to a deck with a picnic table, overlooking a small, rushing creek. Very nice.

The next day I set out to revisit the two tours in northeast Georgia -- chapters 14 and 15 in Backroads and Byways. I found only a few things that needed to be changed: in Chapter 14, "To Helen Back," I found that the Healan Mill, north of Gainesville, was temporarily closed because Hall County was making it the centerpiece of a new park. And in Chapter 15, "Over the Roof of Georgia," I found that a small, electric-powered mill and a restaurant had closed.

On the other hand, for Chapter 14 I was able to add a photograph of Anna Ruby Falls, reachable at the end of an uphill, half-mile walk. I had not photographed it when I came through the area in 2016 because I was short of time.

 Mountain man Les Barnett demonstrates and sells home-made

banjos at the Foxfire Museum. He makesthem out of old tin

cans or boxes. He also makes custom guitars.

Fuji X-H1 camera, Fujinon XC 16-50 f3.5-5.6 OIS-II lens

 

And for Chapter 15, I was able to visit and make photographs at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center near Mountain City. It had been closed when I visited the area in 2016. Foxfire offers a fascinating look at the culture and daily life in the southern Appalachians in the 19th century.

As I drove over the mountain, going south from Blairsville, I was reminded again of what I wrote on the last page of my book:

". . .my most poignant memory is of the last day of my honeymoon. My wife and I had spent a week in the North Georgia mountains, the last several days in a small resort called Enotah Cottages across from Vogel State Park.

On this last day, we packed our Volkswagen and drove over the mountain to Turner's Corner. To the right, down US 19, lay home, responsibility. . . life. I can still feel, even now, the powerful urging of my heart to choose the left fork and stay in the mountains forever.

As Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

So I did. And life has been good."

And so it has. And in a way, I got to do both.

(To be continued.)

Photographs and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone