The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
Worth the ~$20/adult entrance fee, but ONLY if you come on a non-vacation weekday
Also, I strongly suggest buying the combination ticket with Rock City and Battles of Chattanooga. Be warned, if you disregard my warning and come to Ruby Falls with the tourist crush you’ll feel like you were ripped off; Firstly, there’s insufficient parking so you might find yourself having to walk a fair distance up a steep hill. Then you’ll enter, only to find you have to wait as long an hour to be able to take the elevator down into the caverns. Once there you’ll be herded quickly like cattle through narrow caverns that aren’t wide enough for more than a single file of humans — with barely a chance to take photos of said caves, and after that, once you get to the room where the falls are, you’ll be forced to stand in line to get your picture taken by the falls, and only allowed about 30 seconds to do it, all for the low low price of about $20/adult. I have this on very good authority from numerous fellow tourists I met who had made that mistake, and were very very unhappy with their experience.
I however, heeding the warnings of my fellow travelers, arrived on a weekday, when there was intermittent rain and no schools were out on vacation. I arrived mid afternoon and parked three spaces away from the main entrance. I bought my ticket, and had to hustle to the bathroom because the next elevator ride down was in five minutes. Once down there I was in a group of maybe 20 people, and while down in the caverns we only had to wait by the side to allow one group to pass us going the other way. When at the falls there was no line to take photos, and instead we could just do it as we wished.
The only bad thing, and it was pretty bad, was that after almost five years of dutiful service and managing to remain in pristine condition that whole time, I made the mistake of asking a Korean tourist, of the variety who used to live in my neighborhood when I taught University in S. Korea (fitting into their groups is such a priority for Koreans that they almost wear uniforms that help you to identify which ‘class’ they belong to), to take a picture of me, and he proceeded to drop my iPhone 4S onto the cave floor smashing the back screen to smithereens
— right after this picture:
On the upside, the iPhone SE was due to be released in a week or two, and I finally had justification for buying a new phone.
Helen, Georgia, a tiny GA town with a local population of slightly over 500, is one very large tourist trap of a town aimed at locals of German extraction trying to reconnect to their ancestral roots, or anyone else in search of a little touch of a Bavaria in the midst of the Appalachian foothills. Not worth visiting unless you’re already in the area and looking German food.
Note: I took this trip BEFORE having set up my blog — although I had been intending to do it for months already, so I didn’t take anywhere as many pictures as I probably should have.
I had been staying at my friend’s place in Dalton GA for a few weeks, with the intention of staying a full two months (I remember her saying “I have no idea WHAT you’re going to do here for all that time” — suffice it to say I proved her wrong), and this was near the top of her list of side trips I should consider. The drive there from Dalton was very pretty (as directed by my new car’s GPS device — which I have grown to LOVE, never had one before), and took me there via state highways (think two lane roads) that I would never have otherwise had the guts to take.
For most of the trip I was pretty much alone on the roads, which is both restful and a tad terrifying — when you have no idea where you are. In retrospect (looking at a maps attached to my images) I know now that my GPS took me all along the Richard B Russell Scenic Highway (which is a National Forest Scenic Byway) up over some nearby foothills, through the Chattahoochee National Forest, and and into the valley where the town of Helen is located.
View from GA state road 348
The trip took me about two hours and like I said, I was instinctively ‘lost’ but trusting my new GPS system to know where we were going for most of the way … According to the folks who drove up on their motorcycle (see above image) at this location we are still about 8 miles away from Helen GA.
From a business development perspective what makes Helen interesting is that once they realized that their local industry had failed, rather than kicking a dead horse, they opted for something completely different; taking advantage of their location adjacent to a National Forest they decided instead to become a tourist destination town. Per Wikipedia: “Formerly a logging town that was in decline, the city resurrected itself by becoming a replica of a Bavarianalpine town, in the Appalachians instead of the Alps. This design is mandated through zoning first adopted in 1969, so that the classic south-German style is present on every building, even on the small number of national franchisees present (such as Huddle House and Wendy’s).”
When I arrived I was hungry with a capitol H, having not eaten anything that morning other than a cup of coffee. So, my very first stop was at the first decent looking German restaurant I could find Hofbrauhaus Resturant in the picture at the top of this blog, which at the time also had decent YELP reviews… BLECH. I had one of my favorite childhood dishes, Weiner schnitzel!! As a kid I was one of those incredibly picky eaters who was 10 lb underweight and could drive my mom crazy by going for a full day on three french fries and a glass of chocolate milk. One summer we were in Austria following my dad around as he presented academic papers at conferences, and my mom had discovered I would actually eat Weiner schnitzel, so the first priority was checking if a restaurant served that, and THEN was there anything else on the menu for the rest of the family. So I know my Weiner schnitzel (which I am said to say I can no longer eat because my penchant for everything fried has resulted – I was diagnosed two months after this trip — in liver disease); and to be bluntly honest I was mightily unimpressed with how this restaurant prepared it … as in, “I drove TWO hours for THIS?”
That said, the place DOES have a good view of the river…
The next thing I did upon arriving was, using just my phone phone and the various apps I had on it, I tried to find a decent place to spend the night. There were NOT as many choices as I would have hoped (I have since gotten much more skilled at delving those depths from my iPhone), and at that time I had not yet installed the Airbnb.com app into my iPhone (I was still using a iPhone 4s then, which was already four years old, had VERY limited memory and was starting to slow down from old age), so I was forced to limit my search to national chains — I now know better. I ended up with a room at the Hampton Inn, and since the hotel was half empty I was able to convince the staff to upgrade me to a room with a balcony overlooking the Chattahoochee river for no extra fee.
Once I found out the name of said river I couldn’t help myself, I started singing the Alan Jackson tune, “Way down yonder on the Chatahochee never knew how much that muddy water meant to me…” incessantly. However, looking at the picture, and based on how all the buildings near the river are either on 8 foot stilts or behind equally high restraining walls, I am guessing it floods fairly often.
After having checked in I went to walk around and discovered that this town closes down way early, and from the looks of it most stores don‘t open till noon. Only two stores still open at 5:30 were both owned by what I am guessing are a man and a woman who were both Indian (India) and I am betting are man and wife– work ethic anyone? The whole town looked like it could be part of the German exhibit at Disney-world’s Epcot, the next day when I walked around I discovered that most of the shops have at least one German style hat with a feather in it … only done on the cheap, so that it kind of reminded me of Old Town in Orlando, which I had just lived next door to for about four months, only sans the amusement park rides and haunted houses, etc.
Other than that there were a handful of interesting shops, like this one place that had it’s own hive to produce it’s own honey… but not much otherwise
Why yes, our honey is Fresh! @Betty’s Country Store
Upon checking in, I had told the staff member there how unhappy I had been with the food at the Hofbrauhaus and could he make a better suggestion for my Dinner. He suggested The Bondesee, saying their were the only place in town with an actual chef from Germany, and that it was the place all the locals in town preferred.
And now, after having eaten there… Wow!!! I STRONGLY suggest Bondesee German Restaurant to anyone in the general vicinity of Helen GA.
Walking in the 12 cats who seem to believe that the front entrance of the restaurant is their home (so that the covered patio area which they seem to have taken over stinks of cat urine) would NOT normally have been a good sign, nor would my conversation with the grumpy owner when I swung by there at around 6pm … had it NOT been for the recommendation of a local those two things would have sent me scurrying elsewhere…
However, after having now eaten there, the chef is apparently a man after my own heart in that he seems to believe that there’s no such thing as too much garlic. Seriously, I don’t think The Stinking Rose (a San Francisco institution) serves less garlic… I was in garlic heaven. The butter for the bread was amazing enough to eat without the bread, and the mushroom appetizer came in a cream and garlic sauce that was divine (I had it as a side for my Weiner schnitzel because ALL the sides were carbs (I opted for the Spätzle) … and the portion sizes for me (a single) were more than enough for two people.
The German beer looked dark and a bit scary, but it was very smooth and went really well with the food. Oh, and the OH SO GAY — to the point where he was a caricature of gayness — waiter just CARDED me!!! Talk about how to make a 51 year old woman happy. He looked genuinely shocked to see we were the same age.
This was the first military park formed in the US. It memorializes the Civil War battle fought Sept. 18-20, 1863. So many bullets flew within these woods during this battle that the surrounding trees because valueless for milling, due to all the bullets embedded within them. If you have any interest in Civil war battles, check out this highly documented park. — Don’t forget to use your National Parks pass.
I strongly suggest that you reserve this park for a nice day when you have a few hours to spend; stop first in the visitor center. There is a 24min documentary reenacting the battle. Watch this first, and then tour the battlefield. Also, in the gift store — assuming your car has a CD player you can purchase a guided tour of the park CD for $10. On various signs around the park you will also find cell phone accessible annotations, but those are far fewer, and interestingly do not duplicate the information available on the CD.
This is completely a aside, but I assume (wrongly of course) when I’m in a historic national park that the other people around share my interest in history… at this location The guy parked next to me was driving a yellow Jeep by the name of the Rubicon, and I told him I loved the name of his Jeep because of its historical nature.
So he said, ‘it is named after a river in California’ and I responded “I think it’s more likely that that river was named after the Rubicon ‘river’ which marks the northern border of Rome which Cesar crossed with his troops, essentially declaring war on Rome itself; this is why the term ‘crossing his Rubicon’ now means passing your point of no return”
He looked a little embarrassed and said, he had no idea that was the source but he probably agreed that that’s why they named the river in California Rubicon … and might be the also named the Jeep that…
That said, scattered all throughout the park are all sorts of beautiful memorials both to the fallen, and to particular maneuvers that occurred in that location.
As I look at these things I imagine the families of the various regiments and corps, fundraising and organizing in order to pay for these things to be built to the fallen.
And then with signs like this one (above), you have got to wonder, did they bring back soldiers to walk the fields and try to come to a consensus of what events happened where?
This, The Brotherton Family Farm (above) is where miscommunication among the Union generals resulted in a half-mile break in their lines allowing the Confederates to break through.
This is Wilders Tower (above), it marks the site where a small group of Union soldiers held back the Confederates long enough to allow the other Union soldiers to retreat to Chattanooga. They were able to do so in part because they had a new technology of repeating gun The sound of which confused the Confederates into thinking that there was a much larger group of Union soldiers here then were actually present. (Also let’s hear it for national park toilets that are out in the middle of nowhere! I had been holding it in for the last hour)
And here is a picture I shot in haste as a group of about 15 baby deer surrounded my car!!
Snoodgrass Hill
The sun was now setting, which I had been warned is when the park closes, so I headed home.
A must do: I paid $28 for a 30 minute airboat ride, but since business was slow the pilot kept us out there for over 45min.
Anyone going to central Florida or further south down the peninsula, into the Everglades proper, really HAS to do at least one Airboat ride, it’s obligatory. I did this as sort of a last minute trip before heading north out of the land of Amusement parks (aka Orlando). I had intended to do it since arriving in June, but weather was unseasonably warm this year, and it wasn’t till January that it was finally cool enough for me to be willing to spend a full day in the sun — they were finally having a cold snap that demanded a sweater. I have to say it was very pleasant ride.
Perhaps it was the location (near Orlando which I opted for over driving an hour away from town) but the ride was more about being out in the sun and the wind, and enjoying the view, than about seeing wildlife — although we did seem some. In the picture below, if you put your nose right up to the screen and look to the left of my shoulder — just to the right of the chain — you can see a large grey spot which is a smallish alligator (although its easier to see in the bottom right image). I think we MAYBE saw two alligators the whole trip.
The bird in the image to the bottom left is one that is almost extinct (I forget the name). The driver told us that they seeded the swamp with a type of snails that these birds like to eat, and because the boat kicks up the snails from the bottom the birds have learned to follow the boats. All in all a highly enjoyable trip. Personally I think a 45min trip was long enough.
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 