Today, believe it or not, we had a good reason, we woke up to a beautiful morning and decided to head up to the mountains. An important side note here is that Beau and I tried to head up to the mountains to go camping on Friday but alas after we packed the car and made it all the way to Red Top, we found that the last camp site had already been taken. We wandered around a bit trying to find another suitable campground but most of the area surrounding Lake Allatoona had been flooded and so no other campsites were open for business.
Today though camping was not our goal. Today we decided to head up to an apple orchard to go apple-picking.
After scoping out a few spots on the web we hopped in the car and took the 45 minute or so trip up to Ellijay. The drive itself would have been worth the trip. The leaves are not quite changing and the views are amazing. On top of the dozens of apple orchards there are a number of festivals going on at this time of year.
Our destination was the BJ Reece Apple House. Beau and I stopped first for lunch and a cup of hot apple cider each (the day started off surprisingly cool, fall is definitely here). Once we were full of yummy apple cider we headed out to the orchard to pick a 1/2 peck of apples which basically is around a dozen (or was in our case). Beau did most of the picking as he was taller and the good apples were closer to the top. Mostly it was just fun to be out on such a beautiful day and walking around.
Once our bag was full of apple goodness we headed back inside which is really a farmer's market of sorts. Beau got a muscadine slushy...I know, gross right? And we picked out some green beans and okra. Beau had a craving for some fried okra.
We headed in to downtown Ellijay to get a cup of coffee and walk around some more in the beautiful weather. We stopped in at a little store called "Trevor's General Store". Trevor, as it turns out, was the beautiful dog that was lounging around on the hardwood floor. We found what looked to be some delicious treats: five pepper hot sauce and vegetable soup starter.
We made our purchases and could not wait to get home to get cooking. Our original plan was to make cornbread, soup, fried okra and apple turnovers but once we got to cooking we decided our plans were much bigger than our stomachs and skipped the turnovers. We'll leave those for another day. In the meantime, our stomachs our full of delicious food and our heads are swimming with wonderful visions of this beautiful state in which we live. We are so blessed to have so many amazing destinations within only a few hours drive.
Part two: Apple turnovers coming soon!
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