Festivals, Scenic Byways and Piglets

 

Blairsville, Georgia (high 72, low 48)

 

We’ve had well over a week of rainy, cloudy weather.  We’re ready for some sunshine and it looks like it will start today.

Despite the rainy, cloudy weather, we’ve been to a couple of the fall festivals.  First, was the local Sorghum Festival here in Blairsville.   I posted about it last year, so the only new thing we saw this year was this bunch of adorable piglets.

Aren’t they sweet?  Most of the time they spent rubbing up against something scratching themselves.  They were the itchiest little things!  Mama was busy rooting in the dirt.

On  Wednesday, we went to the Georgia Mountains Fall Festival in Hiawassee.  It’s held at the Georgia Mountain Fairground, and is by far the best venue for any of these many festivals.   The venue is big, well laid out and beautiful.  They have a beautiful campground on the lake, right across the street.  After the crowds at the JC Campbell Folk festival, I decided this is my favorite festival. 

The vendors and crafters are set up in old style unpainted buildings, which look like they’ve been built a hundred years ago.  Everything blends in with the surroundings and it’s very pretty.   Especially in the fall.

They have different musicians every day.  Most of them are country performers.  The tickets are $12, but for the price of admission, you get to see the daily show.  This is where we saw John Berry last summer.

We saw Ronnie McDowell this time.  He’s been around a long time, playing at the Grand Ole Opry, and has both written and sung some hit songs, including  Older Women Make Good Lovers, and You’re going to Ruin my Bad Reputation.  He and Conway Twitty also sang the hit duet, It’s Only Make Believe.

My wonderful (and fairly new) little Canon digital camera has quit working, so I used my old Canon.   I never could quite get it set right to take photos in the dark music hall, so I didn’t get a decent picture. 

Ronnie McDowell put on a great show, but the opening act, was another story.  The Paris Dancers were a group of seniors ranging from 56 to 81 years old.   They sang and danced, but it all seemed to be in slow motion.   :) 

The fair ends tomorrow. It’s well worth the price of admission.

After the concert, we were surprised to come outside and see it raining pretty hard.  We had to wait it out and by the time the rain quit, most everyone had left the grounds.

It was nice and peaceful.   And pretty.

They have a lot of displays.  An old school house, an old farm house, country store, and much more.  We didn’t have any crowds to fight.

We were told that in the old days, people would grow green beans, and then hang them up to dry during the winter.  These dry brown things are green beans.  When they got hungry for veggies during the long winter, they would rehydrate the beans and eat them.  Yum.  :)

The round things are dried tobacco.

The dogwoods were pretty.

There is a huge building with a lot of old tools, toys, appliances, farm equipment and much more.  It’s very interesting to see all this old stuff.

Old toys.

Remember these?

 

It would have been nice, if they would have had a sign on these items. I have no idea what these things are.

This old school bus was determined to be from about 1938.  It was parked right behind the school house.

 

Yesterday, we took a drive into Blue Ridge and got the oil changed in the truck, then took a drive along the Richard Russell Scenic Highway.  We were glad to see the leaves hadn’t all blown from the trees after last week-ends storms.

The leaves are just starting to turn in the lower elevations.

It went from sunny to cloudy off and on all day.

I love the “smoke” on the mountains.

 

It rained for a while.

The color was better at the higher elevations, but still not at the peak yet.

 

We turned around and drove back down the mountain, passing an Appalachian Trailhead, and then some thick fog/clouds.

It went from sunny, to this.

And to this. about a half minute later.

 

 

Back, closer to home. This is our road leading to the campground.  Note the yellow field on the right.  That is the soybean field that was such a lush green just a few weeks ago.

 

We have friends visiting in nearby Murphy, NC this week-end.  They are looking at some property for an rv lot.  We’re going to meet them sometime today…..and we’re hoping they will want to go to Shoe Booties Restaurant.   I’ve been dreaming of their lasagna all summer.

Flooding and Severe Weather

 

Blairsville, high 61, low 48)

 

For at least a week, the weather forecasters were warning of an upcoming multi day severe weather threat, with a possible tornado outbreak.

Tornado’s always get my attention.

Unfortunately some didn’t take the tornado warnings seriously enough and stayed in mobile homes. There were two fatalities, one where a tree fell on a house and one where the mobile home was obliterated by the EF2 tornado.  Such a shame.  Mobile homes and Rv’s are NOT the place to be in a tornado.

We didn’t get any rain or wind during the day Monday, but as the front approached, and the tornados were popping up along the frontal boundary.  The radar showed a solid red squall line from Indiana down to the gulf coast of Florida. There was even a tornado in Crestview (our home of record).

It became apparent the first wave would come in the middle of the night.  We have a clubhouse in the Rv park, but it’s open on both ends and not much of a shelter. There is a laundry room and restrooms that would be somewhat safe, but we didn’t think they would appreciate us bringing the cats. 

We decided to break down and go to a hotel.   At least we’d be comfy and not worried about making a run to the clubhouse in the middle of the night, during a storm. We weren’t in a tornado alert yet, but they were coming in as the storm moved. As it turned out, the hotel wasn’t necessary, but that’s okay.  Better safe than sorry.  Don’t want to be the guy who goes home with the Idol. ( A reference to the Tv show Survivor)

We decided this was a good option for us, since we have animals.  We’ll probably do it again in the event of severe weather.  A little inconvenience and a few bucks is worth the peace of mind.

It rained  off and on most of the on Tuesday, and by the time it stopped, we had 5 inches of rain in our rain gauge in only a 24 hour period. 

The river behind Rivers Edge was raging and had overflowed it’s banks but had receded a lot by the time we went by.

We took a drive to check out all the flooding.  The rivers overflowed their banks and some houses were surrounded by water.   Now, maybe I see the reason they built dams in this area.

The TVA have been keeping the lakes and rivers low for the upcoming rainy season.  Now, I see why.

This is a put-put golf course that is next to the river.

There are leaves everywhere!   I imagine this will put a big damper on leaf peeping.

 

So, onto another subject.

I got the nicest e-mail from the parent of the boys I photographed and blogged about a few days ago.

If you missed that post, you can read about it HERE.

I was concerned that maybe I shouldn’t post the boys picture on the blog, since they were minors and I didn’t want them or their parents to think we were perverts.

This is the e-mail I got.   I assumed they were brothers, but maybe not.

Thank you so much for demonstrating to my son and his friends how cool this big world can be!  He is so proud of your pictures and he could not wait to share the story about meeting you two. We hope you have a phenomenal time on your travels and will continue to follow your blog. And, no, we definitely don't classify you as perverts...just genuinely good hearted people.
Wishing you both safe travels and exciting adventures~

Wasn’t that nice?     We sure enjoyed watching their kayak run over the waterfall.  It made our day, and I was happy to send them the photos I took.

The sun it out, and it looks like a beautiful day.  We’re going to clean the house, then do something fun. 

We are hoping we’ll still get to see some more fall color.  I’m sure most of the leaves we saw on Sunday have blown off, but much of the area was still mostly green, so we’re hoping it hasn’t ruined the rest of the leaf peeping season.  It will be a little to wet for a hike for a few days!