Tallulah Point

In between morning and evening sessions, I would drive just down the road to Tallulah Point, a general store with "The Best View of Tallulah Gorge" that I stumbled across my first day.  I returned each day following for the company of the sweet owners, boiled peanut seller David, and Peach NEHI.  I was told "You can taste the fuzz on the peach." 

It's true.  New favorite drink.  

Mr. David would walk around offering tourists samples of "bawled p-nuts."  

It was my first one ever, which is crazy since I'm a Georgia native.  

They used an antique fire extinguisher to prop open the door.  

Beautiful.

Thirty three cent miniature elephants. 

I bought two, so they could be friends.

Hard candy!  Lemon and butterscotch are my favorites.

They collect the glass bottles to make jewelry and wind chimes.

The view was five times more expansive than this, even bigger than the one I got from within the state park.

The Great Wallenda was a 65 year tight rope walker who crossed the quarter mile expanse of the gorge and completed to head stands back in 1970.  

They had beautiful old-fashioned tin toys.

Above the store was a bbq/antique shop. Crazy combo.

I brought different friends each day.  We also hit up the local thrift store.  So fun!

Cam and Charlie were planning on going to Tallulah Gorge to rock hop and finally picked this past Saturday.  

The gorge is five minutes from my camp so we all got to meet up. 

Passes to the bottom of the gorge ran out, but fortunately, I had made friends at Tallulah Point and was able to ask for their advice.  

Mr. David drew us out a map for a very sketchy path to Panther Creek. 

 It involved us making a few turns in our car, and then getting out when we found a white door lying in the woods.  

Then we got out and looked for the trail, left the trail when we heard the river, crossed it and then followed more trails.  

We hopped rocks, trying to balance on logs spanning the width of the river and other silly challenges we made up.  

Cam stumbled across a yellow jacket nest and got stung half a dozen times and had to leap into the river, and brought them to us and I managed to get stung!  

I watched us closely for allergic reactions.  

After lots of hopping, climbing and rambling we came to the falls.  

And then the bottom fell out and we made our way back to the car in the downpour.  

We got lost and I fell down a lot because I couldn't wear my glasses without them fogging up.

Sounds crazy, but it was a ton of fun, and best of all was the quarter bottle of Peach NEHI waiting for me in the car.