My wife and I were lucky enough to get away this weekend to Highlands, North Carolina. The weather was perfect, the leaves were falling, and the waterfalls were roaring after heavy rain on Friday. Here are some quick thoughts on the trip. Hopefully, pictures will soon follow. Homecoming went very well, and pictures will soon follow of that.
Georgia waterfalls are beautiful and graceful. North Carolina waterfalls are magnificent and powerful.
While at an antique store outside of Dahlonega looking for a memento of our trip, we came upon a cheap desk that, we thought, would make a perfect desk for our eldest son. Feigning to use my professional furniture grading eye, I pulled out a drawer for inspection while my wife watched. As I lifted the drawer up to look in the bottom, I heard my wife gasp in shock and dismay from where she could see the bottom of the drawer. I couldn't see the bottom, and my heart skipped a beat as I visualized a colony of black widows or brown recluse spiders or a hidden murder weapon in my hands. I was afraid to turn over the drawer until my wife started laughing. Pasted on the underside was a photo from, we guess, a popular men's magazine of two girls by a pool sans swimming wear. We laughed for a long time. Oh, it was the only drawer so decorated; we checked the other six.
We visited waterfalls we had never seen before. On both mornings, we made the brief drive to the ironically named, "Dry Falls" before dawn to enjoy some solitude. The flow was so immense, powerful, and loud that leaving it felt like leaving a rock concert. The spray burst up from the rocks below in running puffs that startled us for looking so very much like leaping white ghosts in the cold morning air. While we couldn't see the sunrise from where we were, we could see the evidence of the sunrise, and that is all we sometimes need.
There is a strip-mall in Dillard In one of the strip malls that make up the city of Dillard, Georgia there is a large antique store, a Christmas store, a general store, and an "independent" coffee shop. While my wife and I sat outside at a table sipping our hot beverages of choice, my wife asked if I had noticed the many "earth-friendly, organic, local, sustainable, etc" signs in the coffee shop. Indeed it was hard to miss the theme of the shop. Then she brilliantly observed something I had entirely missed, "Why do all the men at places like this have long hair and all of the women have short hair?" It is something to ponder on a cloudy Monday at work. The hot chocolate was excellent.
Peace
..._
Above and Below: Taken at Dry Falls, NC on Highway 64 just west of Highlands, NC.
