Amicalola State Park - Georgia

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).

More Sightseeing in Atlanta

While in Atlanta, we toured CNN, wandered around the Georgia Capitol, and had tickets to see Ben Bailey's (game show host of Cash Cab) stand up show.

The CNN tour started on the 8th floor - escalator up and stairs down. You can see it's a large building and the TV in the bottom quarter of the photo is showing the press conference President Obama had on Friday. We saw the studio where the newscasters were waiting to broadcast after the press conference ended. The area under the TV is a food court which had been taken over by Kentucky basketball fans. The Georgia Dome is around the corner from CNN and the SEC Championship games were played there. On the transit system train to get to CNN/Dome Station, we were surrounded by Kentucky fans that packed in standing shoulder to shoulder and shouting "WHITE!", "BLUE!". It was quite amusing.

The Georgia Capitol is in a less rowdy part of town.

The Senate had some activity going on and people about but by the time we got to the public viewing area, the room was empty. So we walked around to the House of Representatives.
The chamber was empty except for the Door Manager (I think that was her title). So she talked to us for a bit about the chamber and how it operates and some of the history and then let us wander around and take pictures.

I was able to stand behind the front podium but the others were roped off. The back windows on the right is the room for the newspaper media and the windows on the left are for television media.

John liked being able to see the "behind the scenes" view with phones and lap tops under the desks / podiums.

The representatives' desks had a diagram of the layout with who say where on top and the "dashboard" with a (?) beverage cup coaster; a speaker; buttons labeled RTS, RTF, YEA, PAGE, and NAY; and a microphone.

I found the desks quite interesting. They are the original desks (restored) and the desks used to be the representative's office also - you can see the mail slot on the front! (Had to take a photo of this desk since the name matches my blog name - but not a relation, as far as we know.).

When we were planning our trip, we discovered Ben Bailey was performing in an Atlanta suburb. We reserved tickets for his show at the Punch Line. I haven't laughed that hard at a comedian's stand up routine since I saw Jay Leno's performance in 1989. It took a day or so for my sides to stop aching from laughing so hard. If you are a fan of Ben, he has a special airing on May 21 (or 22) on Comedy Central. It's bound to be hilarious.

The World of Coca-Cola

This afternoon John and I spent several hours touring The World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia. It was better than I expected (I knew it would be a big advertisement for their products and a collage of Coke paraphernalia). We had fun and enjoyed most of the activities and exhibits. The highlights for me were

the Coke dispenser used in space,

a variety of Olympic torches,

and the tasting room. Over 60 beverages that Coca-Cola makes and sells around the world available for unlimited samples. Some tasty ones (I hadn't had Inca Cola since my trip to Peru) and one was the worst beverage I had ever tasted (Beverly sold in Italy).

There also was a dispensing machine that allows the combination / mixing of several Coke products. John enjoyed making a combination that tastes like a creamsicle.

This vintage ad caught my eye. Back then a BIG 16 oz bottle served 3 - today a 20 oz bottle serves one (the nutrition label says serves 2 but most people treat it like 1 serving). Either way, portion sizes sure have changed over the years.

PostMuse and her Orphaned Postcard Project

Quite some time ago while surfing the net, I came across PostMuse's blog about her Orphaned Postcard Project. PostMuse has a postcard collection and has decided she'd rather not have blank backs on these postcards. You can view a list of available cards to "adopt" and she sends them to you addressed to herself in an envelope. All you do is write on the back of the postcard (preferrably about the place/item on the postcard), add the appropriate postage, and drop it in the mail and it goes back to her and her collection. I think I adopted 5 postcards. She does post her received postcards on her blog. This is the first of mine she has posted. Once she receives the postcards back, she sends a thank you postcard to the sender. If you like postcards, check out her blog - you may even want to adopt some postcards.

Bread Machine

For my birthday last week, my husband gave me a bread maker. We (he) made bread with a mix for the first run. The bread turned out well and quite yummy - whole wheat with sunflower seeds, flax seed, and molasses.