Helen Hiking and Oktoberfest

Charleston is nice, but I have yet to find a place in it that you can't hear machines. So this weekend I drug my co-worker away to the mountains :)

The Appalachian Trail is about 5 hours drive away from Charleston where we picked it up in Northern Georgia. We parked and hiked from Andrews Cove to where it T's with the AT, and then out to a view. The humidity did a number on both Jim and myself- we were puffing worse than normal for the first mile or so. A break on a piece of exposed granite with a view of the hills marked our half-way point and turn around. Granola bars gave us the sugar we needed to power the way down. Round trip, we did about 7 miles of blissfully quiet hiking up and down the hills.

White line = on-track!

We hit the Helen Oktoberfest in the afternoon/evening. Helen is the East Coast's answer to Leavanworth (hey, WA did it first!). It's mocked up as a Bavarian village, and attracts thousands from Atlanta and across the Southeast for Oktoberfest, which goes from mid-September to the end of October. While not exactly as alpine as it claims, the hills and the Chattahoochee River are still beautiful. 

Ja!

A meal of Gulash, Spaetzle, and Wurst was a relief after driving and hiking all day - and it came with an amazing view of the Biergarten in the middle of town. Entertainment galore! Later in the evening we joined the festivities by ordering biers of our own and sharing the long picnic tables with other revelers. Jim likes people-watching almost as much as I do, so we enjoyed our evening immensely. 

Prost!

Before driving back this morning, we hit up one more quick hike. It's only a mile each way to Dukes Creek Falls, just outside of Helen. The falls were lovely!

 

I left wishing I could have driven the rest of the Richard B Russel scenic highway. It made me think of Keith Urban's song Who Wouldn't Wanna be Me. "The sun is shinin' and the road keeps windin,' through the prettiest country from Georgia to Tennessee..."