The Amicalola Falls are visible near the top of the treeline in the middle of the photo. It is the highest cascade waterfall in the Southeast (perhaps highest east of the Mississippi River?) at 729 feet. Amicalola is derived from the Cherokee word for "tumbling waters".
The park also has an 8.5 mile approach trail to the beginning of the Appalachian Trail (Springer Mountain).
This is a zoomed image of the top part of the waterfall from the reflecting pool at the bottom. You can see the bridge spanning the top of the falls.
I took this photo while standing on the bridge over the beginning of the falls.
There are 604 stairs from top to bottom of the falls. We didn't take the whole staircase - just a bit at the top and the middle to get different views (that's why John has a smile on his face - not winded from hundreds of stairs).
This is the trail we took from the parking lot to the middle of the falls viewing bridge. The sign posted on the trail reads "This trail is 1,250' in length and the rubber surface is made up of many different sizes of industrial tires that were ground and colored. Approximately 1,300 tires were used and the ground rubber is bound together with a polyurethane aromatic binder. Reuse is one of the three 'R's in efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle to save our planet."
The falls above the viewing bridge.
The falls below the viewing bridge.
Walking back to the car, we looked up the hill and saw this sight. When we got back to the visitors' center, John asked a ranger about it. The vehicle is a moonshine truck that was either outrunning the revenue guys and lost control or the moonshiners pushed it down the hill to distract the revenue guys. The ranger said there is another moonshine truck rusting under the bottom part of the waterfall stairs. Moonshine was (is?) a big part of the economy and culture - even during prohibition (probably more so then).
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