If you haven’t already read the first post for Stephens County, I would suggest going back and reading it. But its fine if you havent, you can go back later so no worries! The other posts explains why J and Ferocious fur baby are tagging along with us on this trip.

If you haven’t read any of our other posts let me explain a few things. A and I (B) take day trips together. A takes ALL the pictures as she is amazing. My style of photo taking is hold camera, press button… it makes me happy but its pure luck if the pictures turn out looking half way decent. I write the posts. A could really do this blog without me (but 1. i’m really annoying and would bug her all the time and 2. She is way to busy with her photography work). If by an off chance any of my pictures do appear in the blog I just held the camera, A made them pretty!

And so our second half of the day begins…

After leaving Tugaloo River Bridge we decided we could eat (I can always eat), and started heading back to town. As we were driving we came up on the road that lead to our next stop (Travelers Rest) and decided that food could wait. It would be pointless to drive right by it just to have to turn around and come right back after we finished eating. Travelers Rest wasn’t hard to find. It sat right on the road and had an Airstream parked right out front- I’m sure from someone else visiting but it made quite an impression on us. Travelers Rest was surprisingly bigger than I pictured it to be. I guess I didn’t really research it enough because you can take tours of the inside, but the tour is $5 each and they didn’t allow Ferocious fur baby inside (I personally think that dogs should be allowed in everywhere that I go- but hey, I’m not in charge). Needless to say we didn’t take the tour. If you ever make it here I would suggest bringing the 5 bucks to go inside. Let me know how the tour is because I would like to go one day!

J completely ruined this place for me… While A and I are in awe taking pictures and looking around, J kept saying “This place sure is abandoned” and “it’s really cool how abandoned this place is.”  Now for the most part A and I do prefer to take pictures of place that have been long abandoned and forgotten, however, I love history and Travelers Rest has some amazing history. I couldn’t pass up this place so I added it to the list for the day. I don’t know how A felt about it, but I LOVED that I was able to stop and see it (maybe next time I’ll be able to go inside). We did do a complete 360 of the outside. There was this old rock sitting outside. It had one of those information posts that sits next to it that gave the weirdest history of a rock I have ever read (not that I read a lot of biographies on rocks…). It basically said “this could be this old, but we know it’s this old. And it could mean this, but we really aren’t sure.” It was a little weird and didn’t quite fit with the rest of the building. Maybe if they did a some rewording they could tell the story better and it would be a little more interesting (or maybe just make more sense). Either way if you ever go to Travelers Rest I wouldn’t spend a lot of time reading about the rock…

After we left Travelers Rest we did stop to get food and then we headed to our last stop of the day- Toccoa Falls waterfall. The waterfall is located on the campus of Toccoa Falls College. The college campus is beautiful and has tons of history! We didn’t really know where on campus the waterfall was but we figured it couldn’t be that hard to figure out- Right? We found a place to park and unloaded from the car. We parked right in front of an old building that turned out to be the old Toccoa Falls Power Plant. It was a pretty neat little building and meant that the falls were close right? At this point I honestly had no idea where the waterfall was at. I don’t think that A had any idea either but we didn’t mind looking around to find it. J however, knew exactly where it was at. He saw it when we drove in (thank goodness for him).

To get to the waterfall you had to go through this little building that was made into a restaurant on one side and a gift shop on the other side. We were sure that once again Ferocious fur baby would not be allowed in and someone would have to stay behind with him. A offered to stay behind.. but that kind of defeats the purpose since there would be no pictures (well close up) to post on the blog. J and I went inside just to look around and we asked the ladies at the desk if the dog could go though. They didn’t mind as long as he was on a leash. It was free admission as long as you are from Stephens county, attend Toccoa Falls College, or are alumni of the college (which we are not so it was $3 per person). They honestly seemed pretty shocked that we were going to pay (I guess they expected us to lie and say that we fit into one of those three groups). J said that we should have lied but I really didn’t think it was appropriate. We headed back outside to pick up A and Ferocious fur baby. We looked all over for them. We even walked back to the car to see if they were there- they weren’t. I asked everyone I saw “have you seen a lady with a dog?” They all looked at me like I was crazy. Finally I decided to call A (I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this sooner). A was in the river…. Well not so much IN the river more just walking on the rocks -whatever it takes to get the picture you know! I don’t know how she managed to make it as far as she did without Ferocious fur baby pulling her over, but I guess he did pretty good.

It was a pretty short walk to get back to the falls but once your were there the sight was breathtaking! I have always loved waterfalls and this one did not disappoint! I probably could have spent the entire day sitting on the rocks right in front of the waterfall and would have been happy as could be. A and I took turns holding Ferocious fur baby, while the other climbed the rocks to get better pictures. To be honest I held him for maybe three minutes, gave him back, and never offered to hold him again – I’m so nice like that. We each spent most of our time here exploring alone. When you are somewhere like this all your problems just seem to fade away, making it easy to just enjoy yourself. After a while I noticed that while I could see A, I had no idea where J was. A didnt’ really seem to have any idea either. There really aren’t many places to hide at the falls, but J had found a place to climb up to get a different view of the falls. I guess he didn’t think the “NO hiking, stay on path” signs applied to him. I decided that they didn’t apply to me either and followed him up (it was clear a ton of people climb there, the path is worn and easy to navigate). I’m glad that I did. It was a beautiful sight and worth the rule breaking.

J made a few comments about how “abandoned” the waterfall was, but thankfully it was pretty easy to ignore him. I think the falls really made our trip, at least for me. Not that the rest of the trip was bad, it actually went a lot better than the other ones had been going. The waterfall just made me feel good… It was peaceful- which I guess is a little weird considering its tons of water flowing over the side of a -insert word here- (I dont really feel like rock, cliff, mountain, hill, or anything else descirbes what it is and vertical drop just sounds funny). Also the history of the waterfall (more precisely the dam that used to be there) is not the best and most peaceful. But you can read about that on your own time. We all loaded back up and started home. I have to say the trip was overall a pretty good one. I will probably leave J at home from now on and just take the trips with A, but it was nice to have him along on this one.

-B

Apparently I took more pictures of the baby than of my surroundings… Sorry, not sorry.

-A

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccoa_Falls

http://www.gastateparks.org/TravelersRest