Chris’s Virtual Vacations – North Georgia Mountains: Day One

Day One: Anna Ruby Falls, Brasstown Bald, and Helen

Anna and I began our fall vacation to the North Georgia mountains Saturday morning a little after 7:00. The air was cool and the sky was overcast but we were too excited about our trip to care. We stopped at a McDonald’s in Buford for breakfast and then headed up US 23 to the mountains. Because we’re both literary types, we decided to take the first day’s attractions in alphabetical order: Anna Ruby Falls, Brasstown Bald, and Helen.

Anna Ruby Falls

Anna Ruby Falls was named after Anna Ruby Nichols, the only daughter of Colonel John H. Nichols, who purchased the Tray Mountain parcel of land containing the twin waterfalls in 1869. The waterfalls are formed by Curtis Creek, which drops 153 feet, and York Creek, which drops 50 feet (and therefore suffers much less damage than the Curtis). The two creeks merge at the base of the falls and lose their individual identities, becoming the Smith Creek, which feeds into Unicoi Lake.

We made it to Anna Ruby Falls around 10:00. Rain had begun to fall lightly as we drove through Unicoi State Park toward the falls, and when we arrived at the Anna Ruby Falls Welcome Center, the rain began in earnest.

Fortunately, I had brought my rugged outdoorsman hat (it used to be a sophisticated man-about-town hat until the feather broke off) and a couple of extra denim shirts, and my umbrella was in its usual place in the back seat, so we didn’t even consider letting a little rain deter us. We spent a few minutes in the gift shop and then walked up the four-tenths of a mile trail to the falls.

The walk itself is beautiful. The leaves displayed every possible fall color, and the creek, alternately to our left and our right as the path meandered upwards, was in some places a gentle, fluid babble and in others a gushing, liquid roar. The waterfalls themselves are splendid.

We stayed at the top for about 20 minutes, took lots of pictures, and then headed back down. After a stop at the drink machine for a Nestea and Mr. Pibb, we set out for our next destination.

There’s a loop of highway – actually three different highways: GA 75, GA 180, and GA 384 – that’s been designated by the Federal Highway Administration as the Russell-Brasstown Scenic Byway. It winds through the Chattahoochee National Forest, going up mountains and down into valleys, past various rivers and streams, and crossing the Appalachian Trail twice. We drove the whole length of the Byway, about 40 miles. Even with the rain and fog and clouds, it was wonderful. Fortunately, the Byway goes past both Anna Ruby Falls and Brasstown Bald, plus a few other places we didn’t stop at because they didn’t fit in with our alphabetical scheme.

Brasstown Bald
At 4,784 feet above sea level, Brasstown Bald is Georgia’s highest mountain. On a clear day, it is said, you can stand atop Brasstown Bald and see into four different states. Strangely enough, those four states are Wyoming, Arizona, Illinois, and Rhode Island. I have no idea how such a thing is accomplished. I’m pretty sure it’s a miracle.

Okay, I made that up. The four states you can see into are Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and, naturally, Georgia. Frankly I don’t think Georgia should count. I mean, you’re in Georgia, so of course you can see Georgia.

Even if you take your glasses off and close one eye and squint with the other, you can still see Georgia. On the other hand, if you keep both eyes open and leave your glasses on, you can see as far south as Atlanta, which is a good 100 miles away.

But of course we couldn’t see any other states or Atlanta – it was still raining, even harder now – but we did get an incredible view of clouds that one normally gets only from an airplane. As the clouds would move across the sky, we could see the mountains in an area, and then they would slowly disappear behind thick white clouds.

But we had to rest a bit from the grueling walk up before we were able to appreciate the scenery. Unlike the walk up to Anna Ruby Falls, the trail to the peak of Brasstown Bald is pretty steep in places and fairly strenuous, especially if you’re walking in the rain, trying to hold an umbrella some of the way, and you’re already out of shape to begin with. Every once in a while we would pass a group on their way down. “You’re almost at the top,” they would say encouragingly, though really we weren’t. The encouragement helped, though. I think it’s what kept me from having a heart attack.

But we finally did make it to the top. We spent a while in the information center up there, reading every sign and pushing every button to light up the maps representing the mountain ranges and rivers and sites where gold had been discovered, and then we walked around outside, looking at the mountains and the clouds and taking pictures.

We stayed at the top for over an hour, then returned to the car, descended the mountain in low gear, drove the rest of the Russell-Brasstown Scenic Byway, and checked in to our Holiday Inn Express room in Helen.

Helen
I love Helen, the faux Bavarian village in North Georgia, because it combines the cheesiest imaginable roadside attraction-type atmosphere with the beauty of the mountains. I don’t care who thinks it’s tacky, I love it, and I will tolerate no harsh words about it.

Helen was born as a sawmill town in 1912, and when the sawmill was shut down in the late ’20s the town began a gradual decline. It might have faded away altogether if not for three men, Jim Wilkins, Pete Hodgkinson, and John Kollock, who got together in 1968 and decided to save the town by remaking it as a tourist attraction in the form of an Alpine village. Their scheme was wildly successful; now, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Helen every year to buy hand-blown glass items, cuckoo clocks, and airbrushed license plates, to eat bratwurst and sauerkraut and drink dark imported beer, and to gawk at those local merchants who really get into the spirit of things and dress in funny feathered hats and lederhosen.

We walked the half-mile from our hotel to the Farmer’s Market Cafe and had dinner. It was our first real meal since McDonald’s, nine hours earlier, unless you count Cracker Jacks. After we finished eating we walked around the town for an hour or so, along with a few hundred other people, this being the last weekend of Helen’s colossal month-long Oktoberfest celebration. At Flossie’s Funnels we ate a funnel cake, and then we returned to the hotel, exhausted but happy.

Acknowledgments

I drew on two books for the background information in this travelogue:

Highroad Guide to the Georgia Mountains by the Georgia Conservancy, and The Georgia Conservancy’s Guide to the North Georgia Mountains edited by Fred Brown and Nell Jones.

I recommend them both.

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