RAIN, and more Rain

 

 

Blairsville, GA  (high 72, low 55)

 

I month of so ago, I had some trouble with my laptop causing it to be too slow to write a blog or do much else. I have had it fixed for quite a while now, but I got out of the mood to write a blog. 

One of the main reasons I write a blog is to be able to refer back to what we did and when and to keep a diary of the weather and temperatures we’re experiencing, so I guess I’d better get back to it.

August was pretty hot here this year and we even had to keep the AC on most evenings until later in the month.

September started getting cool and I think it’s now my favorite month, although we did see some lows into the low 40’s a couple nights.

We’ve  had almost 2 weeks of rainy weather, with only about 2 days of sunshine until Sunday when the front finally passed by.  The combination of Hurricane Jaoquin, which at one point was a Cat 5 storm, and a low pressure system caused record setting rains in South Carolina. The outer bands of the South Carolina 1000 year flooding extended to the northeast Georgia mountains, which is where we are.  We didn’t get nearly the rains of South Caroline, but we got plenty.

Normally rainy days are great times for golf cart rides along the country roads and seeing the clouds hanging on top of the mountains.

 

During this rain event, all we saw was rain and grey skies, so we didn’t even get out in the golf cart.  The streets were flooding from the heavy rains, so we left the golf cart parked.

We got well over 5 inches in one 24 hour period. The normally calm Nottley River which borders our campground, got pretty high with raging waters nearly overflowing its banks.

This picture was taken from the car from the campsite our friends will be on in about 2 weeks.  It didn’t overflow it’s banks, but it was very close.  The river is normally 5 feet lower than in this photo.

You can see the campsites to the right.  Those trees are not normally in the river.

We wondered if our lake was going to overflow, and if it did, was our site on the low end of the lake?

It as higher than normal, but it stayed within it’s banks.

I have been unable to resist all the beautiful Mums that are sold everywhere, so the deck was filled with flowers and fall decor.

After days and days of rain, with more on the way, we decided to bring some of our flowers in so they wouldn’t be ruined.  When Al went outside to cover and move them, it was only a light drizzle, but by the time he finished, it was coming down pretty hard.  Poor Al, got a little wet.

(pictures taken from inside)

Baxter and I stayed nice and dry documenting the progress.

The poor birds were starving but Al kept the bird feeders full and they seemed to have appreciated it.

Thanks Al!  The flowers and birds seem to have survived.

The entire area for hundreds of miles was inundated with rain so our fall foliage may not be nice this year.  We had very little wind, and most of the leaves are still on the trees, so hopefully we’ll get some decent color.

The rain finally stopped Sunday and we have enjoyed being back outside.

Last night on our evening happy hour/golf cart ride we saw quite a few deer. I think everyone was glad the rain quit.

I happened to zoom in and catch this poor deer trying to have a pee in private.  :)

After she finished, she did a little shake.

There are chipmunks in this area, but we had never seen one around our campsite, until this morning.  This guy was hanging out underneath the bird feeder catching what spilled.

 

I’ve been sanding and re-staining our kitchen chairs and Al has been cutting some wood and making new bear decorations.

My best friend that I met in the 7th grade is coming for a visit in a few weeks, so we have to get off our duffs and get our work done!

Snow in the Mountains

 

 

Blairsville, Ga, (high 50, low 27)

I can’t remember the last time we’ve been anywhere where the weather was cold as it was yesterday.  The high temperature was only 37 degrees.   The wind was whipping all day long, with the occasional strong gusts that shook the motor home.  The sun never came out, so that made it even worse. 

It was too cold for the heat pumps, but fortunately our two little quartz heaters kept us nice and toasty all day without having to run the furnace.  Our furnace is our least favorite option for heat.  It’s noisy, and the dry air bothers our sinuses.   We turned the furnace on a few times, just to make sure it still worked and to heat up the basement.  We also kept the bay heaters turned on all day.

Today should be a better day.  The sun is already coming out, so we’ll soon be getting some nice free solar power!

We went up to the local favorite Jim’s Smokin’ Que yesterday for some bbq and Brunswick stew.  Afterwards, we decided to take a drive to check out the snow at higher elevations.

Brasstown Bald mountain is the highest peak in Georgia, so we headed that direction.

Despite the wind and cold, there was still some pretty color.

The higher the elevation, the more snow we saw.

It looks so cold up there.

It was a pretty ride.

 

We got up to Brasstown, we discovered the road leading to the visitor center was closed because of all the snow on the road.

It’s a pretty steep road with sheer drop offs, so I guess that was a good idea.  I’ll bet it was pretty from the top of the mountain.

A lot of other people had the same idea, I guess.

Someone made a snowman!

It was a small snowman. Can you see it?

This guy was going hiking.   Burrrrrr

These people were having a snowball fight. Notice the snowball I caught in midair?

We didn’t stay too long, because we turned the heaters off while we were gone and the little darlins were probably freezing.  :)   Just because they have fur, doesn’t mean they don’t get cold too.

This is a view of our campground.  You can see the trees are getting pretty bare.

There is still some nice color around the campground though.

Right across the street from our lot.

 

Our lot.

Since it was so bitter cold yesterday, we got nothing done in our preparations to head south.  We we won’t be leaving tomorrow.   Al still needs to drain the waterheater and washing machine in the cabin.  The hot tub also needs draining, cleaning and winterizing.  Hopefully the weather today will be more conducive to working outside.

We love our little home in the mountains, but I think it’s time to head south.

What do you think?

Snow

 

Blairsville, Georgia (high 40, low 25 with snow flurries)

 

Well, we got our wish. 

Last night around 11pm, it started to snow.  Big fat snowflakes, and lots of them. Baxter sat on the window ledge for the longest time watching them fall. He was so cute.

Al and I were pretty impressed to.  It has been a LONG time since we’ve seen falling snow.

I got up several times during the night to see if we had a blanket of snow on the ground.  We didn’t, but it snowed a little off and on during the night.

This is what we see outside our bedroom window this morning.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stick to the ground, but I guess that’s good because at least the roads won’t be slippery.  We have our hearts set on some Brunswick Stew from the local BBQ, Jim’s Smokin Q. 

I was afraid to walk onto the deck.  It was very slippery.

The poor birds are hungry and the birdfeeder was full of snow.  Al has since remedied this situation and now there is big fat dove sitting there.

 

 

After almost 4 months here in Blairsville, we have really settled in, and so we have a lot of preparation to do to leave.

We worked around here most of the afternoon yesterday, reorganizing, and moving things around.   We still have to winterize the hot tub and cabin water systems.   That didn’t get done yesterday, and now today, it’s cold and very windy outside, so that won’t be a pleasant job.

The patio furniture all goes into the cabin, but now it’s all wet.  

I guess we won’t be leaving tomorrow.

Okay.   We’ve seen snow, we’re over it.  If it’s not going to snow enough to cover the ground, then I’m ready for the sun to come out and the wind to die down.  Some sunshine  and warmer temps are starting to sound kind of nice.

It is definitely time to head south.

Merikay and Craig, aren’t you glad you left when you did?

 

Maybe we should be on the Overseas Highway?

 

Looking for Gold and Finding Classic Cars

 

Blairsville, GA  (high 79, low 67)

Armed with a metal detector,we went down to the river on Thursday on a hunt for gold.  If you remember from a previous post, nearby Dahlonega, Georgia was the home of the first gold rush.  Al was hoping to find a nugget or two leftover.   :)    

There are a lot of pretty rocks with flakes of fools gold in them. 

We found three blobs of what appeared to be melted metal.  They were gold-ish in color when they were wet, but once they dried you could barely detect any gold color.

They metal detector picked them up, so we know they were some sort of metal.  We’re not hopeful they are gold, but thy are metal and we are curious what exactly they are.

They are shiny and look slightly more gold color in person than they do in the pictures.

They are very lightweight.

Anybody have any ideas of what they could be?  They have a definite gold color to them, but not as yellow as real gold.  They were found in completely separate locations.

We didn’t strike it rich, but we had a fun day.

 

We had a lazy day at home on Friday with rain off and on most of the day.  It was a good day to nap and get caught up on Tyrant, which is a new Tv series we’ve recorded.

It’s a great series and we highly recommend it. It’s a great story about good vs. evil.  I think evil is winning.

“Bassam "Barry" Al-Fayeed, the younger son of an infamous Middle-Eastern tyrant, has been running from his past for 20 years. Now living as a doctor in the USA, he has an American wife, son and daughter, and no desire to revisit his familial origins. However, when he is reluctantly compelled to return to his home country (the fictional Abbudin) for a family wedding, he is quickly drawn into a taut political crisis when his father passes away in the midst of growing popular revolution against the ruling family. Bassam must now attempt to use his influence to guide the new President, his brutal and unstable older brother Jamal, to a political solution that will avert a bloody conflict.”

 

We’ve had some rainy days here, but very little thunder and lightning.  It’s so different than Florida where you get the horrible lightning storms every day.

We went to the classic car show yesterday.  It was held at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds, which is the same place we saw John Berry perform last month.

It was a little pricey, at $22 for tickets and parking, but we had a nice day. 

We parked at the top of the tiered parking areas, overlooking the mountains and Lake Chatuge.  There was at least 400 cars in this show.  We’ve never seen such a huge show.

You walk down to the different tiers and the lower you got, the more classic cars you found.

My very first car was a 1956 Ford.  I looked for one like it, but didn’t find it.

This one was very similar, including the color.  Mine was actually considered an antique when I bought it and it was in as good of shape as this one.

There were cars tucked into every nook and cranny all around the fairgrounds.

The next photo was a 1935 Cadillac. 

This car was obviously much more expensive than most of the others and had a lot of really interesting features.  Notice the spare tires?  

Many people don’t know it, but modern cars have little shock absorbers behind the bumpers.  It cushions the car in an accident and gives passengers less of a jolt.  That’s the reason insurance companies want you to have your car inspected after even a minor front or rear-end accident.  If the absorber is compromised, it won’t work as intended the next time. 

This 1935 Cadillac was ahead of its time in that it had shock absorbers on the bumpers.  Of course they were chrome and very shiny and not hidden under the bumper like they are now.

I didn’t get a good picture, but if you look closely, you can see them on both of these Cadillac's.

 

We thought the Cadillac's were the most interesting cars at the show.

We walked around for a few hours, listening to the 50’s and 60’s music being played on the fairground sound system.

We liked this custom truck and boat.

The truck in the next picture on the bottom right housed a still.  Moonshine was big here in the mountains.

 

It was cloudy and cool when we got to there, but soon the sun came out and it was getting too warm to be walking around in the sun.

We decided to take the scenic route home (which really are all of the routes here in the Georgia mountains).  We stopped at a few little shops that were selling mountain decorations and furniture.  We’re not in the market for furniture, but they have some really neat stuff to furnish mountain cabins and it’s fun to look.  Really expensive too.

The predicted rain held off all day, but when we got home and about half way through our evening happy hour golf cart ride, it started to pour.  It quit in time for a short campfire though.

 

Today is the day to have the yummy buffet at Steve’s restaurant.  It’s good every day but on Sunday, they have  turkey and dressing.   Yum yum.  

They are predicting thunderstorms again today, but if it’s like yesterday, most of it will go around us.   Our plans are to do some stuff around the house today.  My big job is to cut down the cover we bought for the golf cart.  I ordered the wrong size and it’s too big, so I think I’m going to attempt to make it fit.   Al doesn’t know it yet, but I want him to install the wood strip on the floor between the tile and Allure flooring.  He’s procrastinated long enough!   It’s time dear.    :)