The Great Outdoors (part 1)...

My husband, you know, they guy that works outside all day, got excited about taking the family camping a couple of weeks ago. He started acquiring camping gear little by little and last weekend was decidedly the weekend for us to go find ourselves in the great outdoors.

As luck would have it, Georgia topography offers a wide array of beautiful landscapes to choose from. We live in Atlanta, which is in north-central Georgia, so the logical choice, for our limited time, was the foothills of the Appalachian mountains – just a short hour and a half drive.

I had done my research and had narrowed our options down to just two – Tallulah Gorge and Amicalola Falls. Both were equally as far from Norcross and also equally as stunning. Eeenie meenie miney moe...Amicalola it is! Isn't the view from the top amazing?

This is the warning sign...it's not too late to turn back! Unfortunately, we had already parked at the bottom of those stairs and walked up to the top. We were on our way down...

"Come on, mom..." What he didn't realize was that my heart rate was so high that my heart had decided to jump out of my chest and meet me back at the bottom of the falls. I would give anything for his energy and enthusiasm for stairs, of all things.

*Gulp* There should be defibrillator paddles at every landing instead of benches.

Okay, so going down wasn't quite as bad as going up...but my legs were Jell-O by the end of it. Now I had no reason to feel badly about the 10 s'mores I was going to consume when we got back to camp.

Strolling down the trail that led us to the middle of the falls...

We were fortunate to have gone camping on a weekend that the temperature was almost cool. The high was in the low 70s and the breeze was quite nice. With a view like that, how could I have been upset – even if it were 100 degrees?

Pause for a tourist snapshot...say cheeeeeeesy! To be continued...