Catching a Break...Catching Some Fish..Catching up with Friends & Family

Finally. After weeks and weeks of hard work and no fun, we finally escaped. This last weekend we took a 3-day trip to the mountains of north Georgia (Ellijay and Blue Ridge). We had so much fun!! Our friends, Mike and Megan Armstrong, joined us Saturday morning. We started driving, and meandered along our way, stopping wherever looked appealing. We ended up having a picnic lunch in a beautiful little place and hiking to see an amazing waterfall--Amlicoa Falls.

After the hike, we hopped back in the car to make our way to the cabin we had rented for the weekend. But we got distracted in "Apple Alley," a bunch of apple orchards and shops along one little road. We decided to stop at one and ended up buying apple cider, apple cider slushies (actually very yummy), apple bread, apple fritters, fried apple pie (like a turnover), and apple honey butter. Ok, so we got a little appled-out. But how often do you get to do that? (Thanks Megan for the picture I took off your blog.)

After buying just about every apple thing we could imagine, we started again on our way, but got distracted by Main St. in Blue Ridge. It was full of shops of all kinds. Of course, Nathan had to stop in at the local fly shop, and had to buy more flies to add to his ever-growing collection. I bought carmel candies and Mad Libs in the general store, and we all had fun (ok maybe not the guys, but they were good sports to tag along) looking in the antique stores, craft stores, and such. My favorite was the rare books store. I could spend hours in a place like that.

After that we decided we were ready to get to our final destination. We were driving along all these beautiful little country roads through the GA mountains, different than the Utah mountains, but very beautiful. All of a sudden we saw a bunch of cabins on the hill. They were spectacular. Nathan and I were speculating on what our cabin would look like--nothing like that, of course. Well, pretty soon we turned down a road that clearly went up the mountain toward those spectacular cabins. Much to our amazement and joy our cabin was one of them. The pictures on the internet didn't do it justice. We had been nervous about that, but it totally paid off.

The picture of the leaves is a picture I took of the tree just outside the balcony off our bedroom at the cabin. Fall colors were just getting started. It was beautiful. We spent the evening grilling steaks on the grill, playing pool, playing games, enjoying the view, talking, hanging out, watching the tv's, eating junk food we don't get to eat all the time, and just having a great time. Then sometime that night our brother-in-law showed up with one of his military buddies. They drove from Huntsville, AL where they are doing some training for the next few months. It was surreal to see Jason in a place that was not a place either one of us is familiar to seeing each other in. It was like all of a sudden a family member popped up in the middle of no where. And we loved it!!! We were so excited to see him and had so much fun talking and catching up, playing pool, and learning fun things about him. Ask him sometime about his mullet/flattop/MC Hammer side burns haircut from his childhood. So funny, Jason! You are such a character. Our only wish was that they could have stayed with us the rest of the weekend and not had to leave after such a short visit.

Sunday morning after we went to church in a tiny little branch in Ellijay, GA. It was awesome to be in church in such a small place. That afternoon we tried to find some Sabbath-friendly activities. We ended up hiking to a place called "Swinging Bridge." The bridge really did swing when walked on.

The guys decided to try the river for fish.

I had a lot of fun practicing casting to the little tiny fish in the river that I could see. It was fun watching them come up and try to eat my huge dry fly. They hardly ever went after the small nymph. It was entertaining and quite fun. Here's the second largest one I caught that day (notice Nathan is holding it--I haven't found any gloves yet, and I tried to will myself to grab the fish and take the hook out, but when it started wriggling I screamed and dropped it).

The next day Nathan and I went on a guided float trip down the lower Toccoa River. I caught several fish, believe it or not, the biggest of which was a rainbow trout about 8 inches long. It was a rough day fishing. There was one point where Nathan and the guide spent about an hour casting to about 10 trout we could see right under the water. They were eating something off the surface, but heck if we could figure out what it was. I think about 7 flies later Nathan finally gave up. He was very frustrated after 8 hours of fishing and only a few trout caught. Here's a picture of one and of the river.

All in all, it was a really great weekend getaway. Something we would really like to do again. Oh, and we paid only $2.96/gal. for gas on the way home, topping off a really great trip.