High Falls State Park, Georgia

We're staying at High Falls S.P. for 2 nights, the travel night and one extra to kind of catch our breath before heading to the RV-Dreams Rally in Tennessee tomorrow. We didn't take much out of the basement, just the chairs and the grill, and even inside not too much came out of the cabinets just for the short stay. We didn't realize it at the time, but we are on a typical 'weekender" schedule...in on Friday, out on Sunday! There's a lot of sites leaving in the morning, so we want to get a somewhat early start in case there's a traffic jam at the dump station on the way out...there was no sewer hookups here, so we are using our holding tanks. As full-timers, we will generally stay away from that weekend schedule, especially at parks like this one, where you reserve a type of site, not a specific site, and you take whatever you can find open when you arrive. When I had checked in the ranger told me they were "packed" for the weekend, and couldn't tell me what area had any open sites; just take any yellow tagged open site we found. Well, rather than drag the trailer all over the campground, we took the first open site we came across. And it's fine. It's next to the "Program Area", where the volleyball net and playing fields are, but it's not too noisy...just a typical family weekend. I am a tad nervous about leaving tomorrow; the roads here are windy, and it's a pretty steep hill going up an out. Al assures me the truck will handle it "piece of cake"; I'm already finding that I get a little tense on travel days. Hopefully, that will settle out as we find our breaking camp routine.

Today was hot and humid, with thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon. We decided to go out and walk the falls trail before it got too hot and the storms came in. The sun came out, and I was able to get some nice pictures. But first, the story :-).

High Falls is fed by the Towaliga (pronounced ti-laggi by the locals) River, which is Creek Indian for "roasted scalp"...attractive, huh? According to legend, the Creeks massacred the settlers in the area in the 1800's. Being July, and hot, the scalps began to spoil quickly, so the Creeks took them down to the river to dry or smoke them. hence, the name of the river.

Anyhow, the white folks took over and in 1890 the the Towaliga Falls Power Company began constructing the dam across the river at the head of he falls, forming the High falls lake, and providing electricity to power the cotton mills in nearby Griffin Georgia. The dam formed a 650-acre lake, and is 606 feet long and 35 feet high. The stones used for it's construction were cut from the stream below. The Georgia Power Company operated the dam from 1905 until it's closing in 1958. The dam, lake and surrounding property was then donated to the state in 1966, turning it into the state park that it is today.

High Falls Dam. The park visitor center is across the lake from here, and the park rents out boats for visitors to use. there are two camping areas, the lake area to the right of this picture, and the riverfront area, which is across the street behind me as I take the picture.

The top of the falls, below the dam

The first tier of the falls, and the steepest drop. Notice the feeder falls across the way.

Another view of the steepest drop, from the other side. It doesn't look like a long drop here at the top, but it sure does when viewed from the bottom!

The ruins of the powerhouse used to generate the electricity

Time to cool off down river!

Aaahhhh!!!

Pretty view of down river, calm and still after the rapids

I liked these flowers, a sign of spring with the falls in the background

We never did get the thunderstorms in the afternoon, but I did manage to finish the book I started weeks ago! And then I continued to work on health insurance options for us, which is one of the last most important things to get settled, (besides the closing on the business!), and since it's Saturday, and a Pizza Hut within 8 miles, off we went to get our $10 pizza for the week :-).

As I said earlier, tomorrow is moving day, and then we'll be settled in Sevierville for a week while we are at the Rally. We have several informational seminars to attend, some fun stuff to do, a whole lot of networking to do...we need to get ourselves introduced in the full-timers world, and workampers world, so that we make connections for the future. We really do intend to keep going as long as we can :-). And I'm very happy the federal government got the budget deal done, so that the Smoky Mountains National Park isn't closed while we're there! I don't know if I'll get a posting done tomorrow, but look for one early in the week as we get settled in there!