Georgia’s Waterfall Heaven

If there’s one item in nature I really enjoy photographing, it’s waterfalls. Big ones, little ones, roaring ones – I don’t care. During our visit to the Georgia coast, Steve picked up a tourist magazine with an ad for the Georgia mountains featuring, you guessed it, waterfalls.

As we made our travel plans for heading north, we decided to stay a week at the southern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia. A quick search on Google maps showed there were well over a dozen waterfalls we could visit. One of the determining factors for me was how strenuous was the hike? Anything over easy/moderate and I’m out. One review I read on a hiking forum stated “trail is difficult to follow, not well marked and dangerous”. Needless to say, we skipped that one!

On Monday, we headed out to Anna Ruby Falls, only to discover it is currently closed on Mondays. So we stopped at Fred’s Famous Peanuts to check out their store and waterwheel…

I may put that sign on Waldo!

Care for some TOE or FROG Jam?

We did skip the boiled peanut samples, they just aren’t my thing, but the store was a neat stop on the way to the next falls.

The trail to Dukes Creek Falls starts off with an easy boardwalk and switch backs several times, making it more like a 2 mile walk in the woods (round trip) than a hike…

Once we reached the viewing decks, we did come across a few other people, but it was still fairly peaceful. I’m a huge fan of long exposure shots of water…

But, sometimes, it can add a bit of weird…

Over the 2 1/2 seconds it took to take this image, the swirling bubbles in the water created a face. I didn’t see it until I downloaded the picture onto the computer. A lady there was kind enough to take a picture with my phone for us…

Since it was still early when we got back to the Jeep, we decided to try and get 2 waterfalls in one day. We headed to Horsetrough Falls, only to find the Forest Service road blocked off. On the way back to Waldo, we stopped off in the town of Helen. It seemed like a strange place to have an alpine Bavarian style town…

But it was fun to walk around. We found an outdoor bar/grill and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon just relaxing. River tubing is a big draw in Helen and shuttle buses run constantly…

Tuesday we headed back to Anna Ruby Falls. They are only allowing 65 cars in the parking lot at a time to help people keep socially distant, so I can’t imagine how crowed the trail would have been otherwise! The trail is paved the entire way, but, holy hell, it is steep! Thankfully, there are lots of benches along the way and interesting signs to read while you give your legs a rest. Anna Ruby is a double falls and it was difficult to get a good picture of them both with the sun shining on one and not the other…

So, I contented myself with individual shots of the falls…

The trail follows the river and I took quite a few pictures of the rushing water. These are some of my favorites…

My favorite hike was to Helton Creek Falls. 3 miles down a narrow dirt road you find the parking area. There are upper and lower falls and it is a pretty easy walk to them. People generally stop quickly at the lower falls, snap a few selfies then head up to the upper falls with its swimming area.

Since we didn’t plan on swimming, I liked the lower falls better.

We were running out of days, but definitely not waterfalls. We opted to spend our last day just driving around. The Russell–Brasstown Scenic Byway was twisty, turn-y and steep but definitely worth the drive. There is a scenic overlook at the top and you are treated to a stunning view of Hogpen Gap…

The list of places I’d like to return to some day keeps growing. I call it “Bucket List 2.0”

Have you ever visited northern Georgia? What was your favorite place?

Up next – New Hampshire bound