The Mountains Are Calling...

  Well, Hello Dear Friends in Blogland!  I'm finally back from our week's trip to the mountains! The Mountains were calling, and so we went! We are SO thankful to have made the trip up and back safely, with no major issues in travels or other...well, if there were any, I'll get to that later...But for the moment, I just want to say THANK YOU to the Lord, for His protection and care of us throughout this journey.  

I may be taking a few "liberties" with these photos in connecting them to Psalm 121, but it seemed as though it would be a good way to share them.  Most of these photos were taken by me, but a few were taken by my sweet daughter in love, Rose, and shared with me:

Psalm 121

1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence comes my help?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

The leaves were just beginning to turn color, but it was still beautiful!

3 He will not allow your foot to be moved;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

4 Behold, He who keeps Israel

Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;

The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;

He shall preserve your soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in

Our Grandpuppies, Sugar and Spice

From this time forth, and even forevermore.

As you can tell by the photos, we had a beautiful setting in staying at "The Little Cabin in the Woods". It was very quiet, peaceful, and cozy, a perfect place and exactly what we needed. We are indeed thankful for this blessing of time spent with our family.

Our sweet Daughter in Love Rose also provided much of the food for our meals at the cabin. She had purchased and prepared a lot of food in advance and brought it with us in a cooler. It made meals a lot easier to plan and we didn't have to eat out so often. We are so blessed to have such a sweetheart for a daughter in law. I honestly don't know how she did it all, since she was working right up until the day we left for our trip.  (Being younger does help!) 

The Porch was a lovely place to sit and relax and enjoy the views and the peac and quiet...

The firepit was beckoning us to come and enjoy a good time around the fire:

And so we did!

Hubby was relaxing after an urgent care visit to discover that he had shingles developing...but thankfully we caught it in time and the medicine they gave him made him peaceful and tranquil, but it stopped the pain and the development of the virus, so we were thankful to have been able to find a place that could take him in and presribe what was needed!

Time to roast some marshmallows!!

Oh yummy!!! Graham Cracker, Hershey Bar, and Toasted Marshmallows! It doesn't get better than this!

I look forward to this event every year...the highlight of our trip in my mind!

Messy, but oh so good! LOL. 

If  you've ever had a s'more, you know why they call them "s'mores".  You just gotta have  "some more".

So much fun!!!!

No trip to the north Georgia mountains would be complete without a visit to Mercier Apple Orchard:

It's a fascinating place, where they bring in the apples from the orchards by the wagon load and process them, some into apple cider, apple butter, and pies, apple fritters, apple cider donuts, and of course, just plain apples...all kinds of varieties.

The only bad thing about this day was that we didn't know that Tuesdays and Thursdays (we went on Thursday), are BUS TOUR days during peak apple season, and the place was PACKED with people from the busses, all in search of apples and everything else. It was bumper to bumper and we really couldn't get around to see much because of the long lines waiting to check out. If we ever go back, we will remember NOT to go on a Tuesday or a Thursday!

We did manage to get some delicious Apple Butter and a bag of Ever Crisp apples, plus some donuts and apple fritters (which are long gone now).  I wish we could've brought home more apples, but we just didn't have space for them in the car along with everything else.

We also took a little ride up to the two towns on the border of Georgia and Tennessee, McCaysville, GA, and Copperhill, TN. (Click on that link for more information about this area. It's very interesting!)

We are standing at one of the bridges that spans the Toccoa River on the Georgia side, and the Ocoee River on the Tennessee side...same river, just two different names for each state.

The BLUE line is drawn through the town to show you where the state line is.

There's Benton and Rose standing on the state line.

Benton is standing in front of that Blue Ridge Scenic Railway engine. It was in town, having brought tourists there from the town of Blue Ridge down the road a ways, actually near where we were staying. Benton and Rose have done this train trip in the past, but this day we just drove ourselves up so we could have more time to visit the town and eat lunch there. It was very interesting.

The reason we found this area so intriguing is because I know at least one of my husband's great aunts was born in the town of  Copperhill, TN., and his grandmother was born in the Blue Ridge area on the Georgia side, in a place called "the Devil's Backbone", (according to notes I've read from family members) because of the way the ridge of the mountain looks, I guess. Anyway, His great grandparents lived in this community back in the 1890's, but we have no idea exactly where. A lot has changed since then.  But I found this painting in one of the many shops there very interesting:

If you look closely, you will notice that the name on the depot is "Waters Depot".  Well, my husband's great grandfather's last name was Waters. His grandmother's maiden name was Waters, and she apparently grew up in this area.  I have no idea if there is any connection because I really don't know how long they lived in that community, but I found it very interesting that this painting was there in that community where they lived. It makes me VERY  CURIOUS as to the history of this painting. Not sure how to go about finding out more. I should've  asked in the store, if they knew the artist or the history of the picture, but didn't think long enough about it at the time. Now I'm kicking myself! I notice it does say in a handwritten note under the train, "In memory of Susan Long".  Wow, another mystery!!

Either way, whether or not there's any connection, I found it very interesting to think that my husband's ancestors once walked on those hills and streets in that area, over 125 years ago!

Speaking of hubby's relatives, we did actually meet up with one of his cousins from that same side of the family, and had lunch with her. She recently moved to that area from California. I may have told you about his cousin having to evacuate their home in the fires out there this past winter. Thankfully their house was spared, but did have a lot of smoke damage. Fortunately, they had already made plans to move to Georgia prior to the fire, and they were able to sell their home and make that move last spring. We were so happy to be able to see Linda, and actually pray with her as she was scheduled for some serious neck surgery this past Monday (yesterday!). Her husband notified us last night that her surgery was very successful and she was doing fine, so that was great news.

For those of you who aren't on my Facebook page, you may not have known about the near calamity we had prior to leaving for our trip last week.  Thankfully, we had already made plans to rent a van for our trip since we were taking the kids and the two grandpups. Neither of our family's personal vehicles could have transported all of  us very comfortably. Anyway, we had just picked up the rental van and our son was driving it, and we were following him back to our house in our car to drop it off and load up the van for the trip. Suddenly, in the middle of the 4-lane highway in the 60 MPH zone, our car stalled out while driving. Thankfully hubby was able to steer the car to the side of the road and we were able to stop it there safely.  We called ahead to Benton to come back and get us as he was further ahead and didn't see us go off the road.  We called for a tow-truck and also called the dealership where we had bought that car just a few months ago. Thankfully it was still under warranty (even though it was a used vehicle).   When we contacted the service manager at the dealership he knew right away what was probably wrong with the car, since there apparently was a recall out for that same make and model.  The tow truck came and got the car and took it to the dealership, and we were able to carry on with our trip in the rental van.  

After all the excitement of the moment, when we were able to pause and reflect on all that happened, we really had to stop and thank the Lord for His protection over us.  Thankfully there wasn't much traffic on that road at that time, and we were able to get off the road safely. But we stopped and thought about what if we had been driving our car on our trip to Georgia instead of the rental van, and if that had happened on the interstate highway with all of the fast moving traffic around it on several lanes...I shudder to think what could have happened, and also the fact that we would have been stranded far from home with no vehicle or way to get anywhere!  Wow! Praise GOD we had already planned on not taking that vehicle on the trip, and Praise GOD we were not in heavy traffic when it stalled and we were close to home with our son close by to pick us up...so many things that were already being taken care of before we even knew we would need that help! 

Back to Psalm 121 from the beginning of this post:

"1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills—

From whence comes my help?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not allow your foot to be moved;

 He who keeps you will not slumber.

4 Behold, He who keeps Israel

Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;

The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;

He shall preserve your soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in

From this time forth, and even forevermore."

Amen.

Thank you for hanging in there with me through this whole long post. Now I need to get back to visiting with you all. I've missed your posts and I hope to get caught up soon.

Oh, and yes, my neighbor took good care of feeding the cats while we were gone. He said he never saw them, but they did come and eat the food.  This afternoon Sunshine finally showed up and when he saw me he just meowed and meowed and meowed, as if to say, "Where have you been? I missed you so much!" I said the same thing to him.  I haven't seen Blackie yet, but I know he was here some while we were gone because I could see him on the security camera we have on the porch.  He'll show up when he gets hungry enough.   It looks like Sunshine needs something cleaned from his eye, but I'm not sure he'll let me do anything with it. At least I know he's safe and sound and hopefully things will get back to normal here soon.

Good night everyone! And Give thanks to the Lord for the special ways He has protected and cared for you each day as well. Amen.