Brasstown Bald Mountain

 

Blairsville, Georgia  (high 84, low 66)

We slept in (until 7) yesterday morning and got caught up on some much needed sleep. 

Our plan for yesterday was to head to Brasstown Bald mountain, which at 4784 feet, is the highest peak in the state of Georgia.  It’s about 10 miles from us, over some typically curvy mountain roads.

You have to watch the weather, because it’s frequently pretty foggy on the mountain, which limits your view.

We drove up to about 4000 feet to the parking lot.

You can see the visitor center which is up a .6 mile paved and very steep trail.  That building in the center top of the picture is where the trail leads.

Brasstown Bald is part of the National parks system, so we we didn’t have to pay the $5 per person fee.

For an additional $2 per person, you can ride the shuttle up the mountain.

I’m almost ashamed to say it, but we rode the shuttle!  The plan was to ride the shuttle up,and walk down, but I forgot to change shoes and didn’t want to walk straight down in sandals.   That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

What an incredible view from the top.   You can see 4 states on a clear day.  Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and of course Georgia.   You can also see the Atlanta skyline at night.

Brasstown Bald is a working mountain, and used as a fire watch station for the area.

Fortunately, for us, the fog lifted right before we got to the top and we saw this beautiful view.

These are the Blue Ridge mountains.

Can you imagine how this will look in October?

I sure hope we’ll still be here!

This is the parking lot that we would have walked from.

There is a nice visitor center, complete with bears. 

They have a short movie which tells about the mountain. Brasstown Bald has unusual weather, which compares to Massachusetts, and nothing like the rest of Georgia.  The highest temperature at the Bald is 84 and the lowest –27 degrees!

When we came back out from the movie, the fog had moved back in, and this is what we saw.

 

We rode the shuttle back down to the parking lot and planned on hiking one of the nearby trails.

This is the beginning of the trail up to the top of the mountain.  It’s paved, but is pretty much straight up.  We knew the elevation would get to us, so we decided to do it another day.

We walked around the parking lot a while.  It was lined with Rhododendrons.  I’ll bet it’s gorgeous in the spring.

 

We started on another trail, until we saw what we thought might be poison ivy.  You can see Al here, checking it out.

This is what he was looking at.  Opinions please.  Is this poison Ivy?

The entire trail was lined with this plant.

Al is extremely allergic to poison ivy.  He doesn’t even have to touch it.   If he gets near poison ivy, he gets what he calls the “heebie jeebies” and feels very ill.

We decided not to take a chance and canceled the hike.  He never got the heebie jeebies, so I’m now thinking that wasn’t poison ivy.

We found another trail that links up to the Appalachian trail.

This is what it looked like.

 

It was a very pretty trail, but the 4.5 miles to get to the Appalachian trail was going to be a challenge, I think.  We’ll never know because we turned around after a short while.  We weren’t in the hiking mood yesterday.

 

Our next stop was lunch.  Yeah, that was more like it.  Mexican food!

After lunch, we went up to Murphy, North Carolina, which has the nearest Lowe’s store.  We needed a certain type of bird feeder, so we decided to make the drive.  There are a lot of touristy shops on the way, so we stopped at a few of them, because we’re still looking for some things for the cabin.

Here is a cute little outdoor rug we found. We liked the bear theme and the fact that the green matched the trim on the cabin.

If I had taken the photo, I would have given the rug a good shake to remove the grass.    :)

We also found this cute little set of bear coasters.

We tried to find pictures for above the TV and beside the window, but having a refrigerator, washer, dryer, and hot water heater, make decorating a little bit of a challenge.

Our cabin is basically just  a glorified laundry room.  I told Al that we have the cutest little laundry room ever!

There is just no way to ignore the appliances!

We’re just going to put up a few cute pictures do the best we can.

We started on the deck yesterday and got the floor portion about half painted.   We started late in the day to avoid the sun baking down on the fresh paint, but may have started too late because we ended up with dew on the fresh paint.  We’re hoping we don’t have to pressure wash the new paint and start over again.     OH well.