Another Day, Another Georgia Wonder

Sometimes you have to lose yourself 'fore you can find anything.
                                  Lewis in the movie "Deliverance"

Onward to another of Georgia's Seven Natural Wonders. Tallulah Gorge. Back in the 1880s, this used to be quite the tourist spot. It still is, but you don't see the women in long skirts and men in suits and ties climbing all over the boulders. Now it is all lycra and spandex.

We are staying in Tallulah Gorge State Park. We got the last two sites available for rigs our size. Since we are in the mountains, the campground sites were a little bit of a challenge to get level. I have automatic levelers in my rig that are supposed to sense how much to raise and lower each corner of the camper, but sometimes I think each of the four levelers are in competition with each other, all trying to outdo each other – level be damned. After using some boards, I got some of my under acheiving levelers to step up to the plate and I was level.

They had a lovely laundry here – I can't tell you how much you appreciate clean clothes and clean sheets after being on the road for a while.

From Wikipedia:

The Tallulah Gorge is a gorge that is formed by the Tallulah River cutting through the Tallulah Dome rock formation. The gorge is approximately 2 miles long and features rocky cliffs up to 1,000 feet high. Through it, a series of falls known as Tallulah Falls drop a total of 490 feet in one mile. Tallulah Falls is actually composed of six separate falls.

The pictures will show how impressive it was walking along the north rim of the gorge. But what I found truly impressive and super cool in itself was when I went to the Interpretive Center and found out that the movie "Deliverance" was filmed in the gorge. I saw the movie in my youth and it made such an impression on me. It actually made me scared to come south for a few years because of some of the horrifying parts of the movie. If you saw the movie, though, you know how beautiful the scenery was and it was very interesting to see the spot that Jon Voigt actually climbed (without a stunt double) back in the day.




Imagine this in the Fall

See the Suspension Bridge way down there - it is 80 feet above the gorge floor

Red Buds in bloom

The other big deal about the gorge (besides the sheer awesomeness of the scenery) was that Karl Wallenda performed a high wire stunt across the gorge in July of 1970 doing two headstands on the way over. They built these giant towers mounted on footings in the rocks  to hold the cables across the gorge and then once he finished his walk, they just tipped them over and left them there as an eyesore. I guess that is sort of an editorial comment, isn't it?

Clean Up Your Mess People