It's Never Fall In Florida

I didn't get a chance to tell you that I spent the Sunday after the Australian Pink Floyd concert hiking through some woods north of Atlanta, Georgia. An old college roommate of mine took me up to Amacalola State Park, and we walked up the side of a mountain to see a waterfall. The leaves were changing quite late this year, so I got plenty of fall color. You don't get color like this in Florida, believe me. This part is the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. Well, actually I guess it counts up as you go North, so this is the start of the trail. There's a marker, and I took a picture of it, but it wouldn't be very interesting to you next to these bright oranges, reds and yellows.


The falls plummet quite a way, but it's tough to get a clear picture of the whole fall. You can see the top of the falls at the top of the picture above, and I'm standing at the base of the falls, which is an artificial pond, shown below. We walked up the hill to the right along well-marked trails and an old logging road. We came down on the other side, where they've installed hundreds and hundreds of steps. I think one set was four hundred and something, then it's trail again, then another set of 100 and something steps. I don't know what the total altitude was (725 ft, duh!), but I think we wound up walking about two and a half miles.

You can't tell it from these pictures, but Georgia is in the midst of their worst drought in decades. We weren't sure there was going to be any water coming over the falls, but as you can see, we needn't have worried.