Dateline July 8, 2019, Tallulah Gorge, Georgia
As Willie Nelson sang it, on the road again. We pulled out of Flagler Beach on Monday morning, the eighth of July, just as soon as John had collected his new ears at the VA. Yes, John has hearing aids now, and he tells me he can hear me at last. So he says.
It was a long day, eight hours behind the wheel, but worth every mile to roll into Tallulah Gorge State Park up in the north Georgia mountains.
Setting up camp. We arrived and made camp, which is to say we backed the Roadtrek into the spot, plugged in the power, hooked up the water, and settled in for a drink at the picnic table. That is roughing it, Wilson style.
Down into the gorge. The Tallulah Gorge runs about two miles long, with a string of falls that together drop some five hundred feet. We got an early start the next morning and hiked over to the dam, built in 1913 as one of six along the Tallulah River, put up to make hydroelectric power for Georgia Power.
From there we worked our way down the river to the viewing stands. The first one we reached was billed as a scenic overlook, though the view, such as it was, came mostly courtesy of the trees.
We walked on a few miles along the river to L'eau d'Or Falls, which were well worth the stroll and lovely seen from above.
We could have carried on down the twelve hundred stairs to the bottom, and another six hundred steps to a lower level besides. But with apologies to Isaac Newton, what goes up must come down, and what goes down must then climb all the way back up. There was next to no phone service in the gorge, and we were fairly sure no Uber was coming to fetch us, so we took a pass. Back up at the campground we fixed some breakfast and pointed the rig toward Beckley, West Virginia. Tallulah Gorge was a beautiful first stop on our trip north.
Getting an EZ-Pass is not so EZ. Crossing into West Virginia, we met our first toll, in the town of Cool Ridge. Florida has its SunPass, but it does not talk to the EZ-Pass the eastern states use, and since you can buy a SunPass at half the stores in Florida, we figured an EZ-Pass would be just as easy to come by. We figured wrong. We pulled off to pick one up at a local store, and two stores later were told the nearest place to get one was the state capital. One kind lady took pity on us and explained that if we turned right out of the lot, then right again, and went two lights up to the McDonald's, we could slip around the toll. We had a good laugh and set off on the tour. Two lights in rural West Virginia turns out to be ten miles, but by golly we found the turn. We will pick up a pass somewhere down the road.
