Ahhh, my favorite time of the year!

This is a beautiful tree in the yard of my friend, Jayne.

Cool weather (almost) is upon us and I am thrilled to death. That means that I've survived another god-awful hot-as-hell summer in the south! As much as I love being a Southern Belle, the summers are the pits!

My first adventure this "fall"- I don't think it's official yet- was a trip to the north Georgia mountains last weekend. Jimmy and I traveled there to see a concert and we traveled the scenic route. We went through Ocoee, TN and I got to see the people in rafts going down the rapids! It looks like loads of fun but I don't know if I'm brave enough to ever do it! After we saw that, we ended up in Helen, GA and Jimbo had some coffee as we passed through. There was a huge winery but we didn't have time to tour it. Maybe next time!

The concert we attended was held at a county fair. They had camel rides, pony rides, all sorts of ferris wheels and tilt-a-whirls and all that jazz. Now I gave up rides like that long ago, but we found other things to do there.

I had never seen a bird show before, you know, with falcons, and buzzards and owls and all sorts of exotic birds. The man did a wonderful job with them and they would swoop down from the tops of the buildings there so that we could see how very fast they could fly. One bird was used as a model for an aircraft that was built in Tuskegee. It was really fascinating. The owls looked sleepy, but they did their tricks. The little screech owl was 17 years old! It was so cute!

Another thing we did at the fair was cake walk. On our first try, nothing. On our second try I won a cake! It was my choice, so I decided on a Turtle Cake, and let me tell you, that thing was delicious! It had thick chocolate icing over a chocolate cake with pecans and a gooey caramel sauce. Lawzy mercy!

And as is typical for any fair, there was food. All kinds of food. Funnel cakes, pinto beans and cornbread, fish tacos, chicken on a stick- you name it. Guess what I had? A grilled cheese. Oh yeah. It was awesome.

The concert was fabulous and afterwards we headed out with some friends and stopped at Waffle House. My goofy husband put a quarter in the juke box and played the Waffle House March. I have video of him marching out the door. Those people were probably glad to see us go!

A sweet friend lived nearby and she offered her cabin (more like a chalet!) for us to stay. We all went 17 miles up a mountain to the most desolate place I've ever been. But oh, how beautiful! To get to live in that paradise would be, well, paradise! She had a screened in porch, a huge deck, and she has an outside shower! I didn't shower outside because a couple of others were taking turns, but it would have been amazing. No shelter was needed; nobody could see the back of the cabin. So you shower back there just out in the open! Freedom!

Up from her house is Highlands, NC. We drove through the next morning and it looked like an upscale Gatlinburg, or kind of reminded me of the type shops that were in Bar Harbor, Maine. On down the mountain from Highlands is Dillard, Georgia. We went to the great restaurant located at this lodge called Dillard House. The food is served family style, and let me tell you what all they brought to our table! We had Waldorf salad, slaw, relishes, sliced tomatoes, fresh creamed corn, fried okra, lima beans, green beans, cabbage casserole, dressing, rice, gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, biscuits, fried chicken, fried steak and country ham. Dessert was peach cobbler with ice cream. It was amazing, simply amazing. And if you ran out of something, they would bring more! We left very full!

On the drive home Jimmy asked if I ate any of the ham. I hadn't, and he said it was delicious. Today when I was looking at The Dillard House's website I saw that Alton Brown from Food Network named their country ham as The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Man, I was sorry I didn't eat any! I'm going to have to go back. That's all there is to it!

We're planning a weekend in Nashville in a couple of weekends. Hopefully I'll have lots of fun stuff to share with you when we get back. Ta Ta!!