Georgia Mountains in autumn

Last week-end, after watching the weather forecast predicting sunny days, we decided to drive to the North Georgia Mountains. We left early on Sunday morning, October 31st and returned home on November 1st. It took us less than 2 hours to drive to Helen, a mountain town with a “touch of Bavaria.” When our daughters were growing up we visited the area several times and stayed at the close-by Unicoi State Park. We had not been back for many years and had forgotten how lovely it is there in autumn. We decided to find the scenic Chattahoochee River Road, also known as Forestry Road 44, where we entered the Mark Trail Wilderness Area which has a total of 16,400 acres. It is an unpaved logging road, very narrow, going up and down where you can drive at about 10 miles per hour, at most.

After driving a couple of miles into the wilderness you certainly feel like you are a long way from civilization. I drove carefully and did not look on the outer side of the road which was going down quite steeply.

It certainly was a wilderness and all sounds of civilization were gone. Maybe if we had been there many years ago we could have come upon some moonshine production?

Vintage postcard of moonshine still in the mountains

The autumn colors were surrounding us and I stopped the car, in the middle of the road, to take pictures – hoping no other car would come in the opposite direction.

Click on collage to enlarge then click on each picture to enlarge again

Winding around the mountains we could see more glorious colors, either by looking around to the trees, the ground or up to the sky, which was a clear blue. The scent of the vegetation had that special autumn richness. It felt good to be alive.

We saw several camping areas. Being Sunday afternoon most people had already left.

The camp fires were out

and no garbage was around to tempt the wildlife living in the forest, hopefully…

As I stopped the car to take pictures my husband would walk up nearby trails. Not far, at the crest of these Blue Ridge Mountains you can reach the Appalachian Trail which goes all the way to the state of Maine – about 2,179 miles or 3,507 km long.

We kept driving along little waterfalls, rocky outcroppings, and could hear and see streams below us.

We had started our drive at the Unicoa Gap about 10 miles ago and now there was a fork on the road and we were not sure which way to go. Luckily we found a sign and we drove on towards the Low Gap Creek.

It was nice and flat there and we walked around in a deep blanket of dead leaves.

The water in the rushing streams seemed so pure.

As an aside information, I found out that the Mark Trail Wilderness had been named in honor of Mark Trail, a daily newspaper comic strip character created by the American cartoonist Ed Dodd. There were some magazines for boys also in the 1950s called Mark Trail.



In a clearing we saw a small cabin. It was a ranger check station.

The Chattahoochee River originates in the mountains nearby and is a small stream, meandering through the forest.

The flow increases at it goes down toward Helen. It increases even more as it gets to Atlanta, see my post: “Trails along the Chattahoochee” here.

Coasting down our scenic drive, the road became wider and we arrived in the little mountain town of Helen. This village has a long history. First, the Cherokee Indians lived all around the mountains and Indian burial mounds are still there, actually two miles south of town.

Nacoochee Mound, Indian Burial Grounds (from the Web)

Then early settlers came to mine for gold and cut all the virgin timber. But by the 1970s it was a failing small town. Businessmen asked a nearby artist to draw some plans for the town. He had been stationed in Germany so he sketched buildings with gingerbread trims and gave the town an Alpine look. Buildings painted with scenes from Bavaria, cobblestone alleyways and German restaurants and gift shops give the town a real Alpine look.




It was still light when we arrived in the village and we could hear the music celebrating the last day of Oktoberfest.

We selected a German restaurant, the Heidelberg. We had some good German food accompanied by German beer.

After dinner we walked a bit in the town.

Don't forget to click on the pictures to enlarge them

There were many children in costumes for Halloween and some adults too - everyone having a great time.