raven cliff falls

On Saturday, we went to Raven cliff falls just north of Helen, GA for a hike in the woods. It's the first time since my surgery I've done anything strenuous, and it was just fine other than my boots kept eating my socks and I had to take them off and the boots don't fit as good without socks. For me, the cost was well worth it. It was a truly lovely day in the woods. We got a little lost heading up because the directions from the website were wrong. That seems to happen a lot in that area. Thankfully, most of the parking areas around Helen have maps and we were able to figure out where to go. We took Tonka, our good old and faithful dog, with us. He probably wishes we hadn't. He was so tired when we got home that he didn't even get up. We had to coerce him to go to his bed when we got home and then he laid around all day long the next day. Those of you who know Tonka know this is not all that unusual, but he usually hangs out in whatever room there are people in and he didn't even care about that. He barely even lifted his eyes when we came into the room he was in.

So, the hike... the woods were beautiful, the leaves were beautiful, the sound of our feet as they crushed the leaves on the trail was incredible. The river, stream, or creek (we had a debate over what it was) had a glorious song. It was so wonderful to be in the woods for any length of time and we got to spend most of the day in them. There were a lot of people on the trail - evidently it is a pretty popular trail, but we spent a lot of time wandering away from the trail and checking out the water or hanging out just taking in the air. The air is so much cleaner in the forest of the mountains. We found a couple of great camping spots that you have to hike into that we will be going back for. Jason and I got the details about the trail wrong, we thought it was 2 1/2 miles round trip. It turns out it is 2 1/2 miles in and 2 1/2 miles out. We didn't make it to the big waterfall. Tonka was giving out by about 2 miles in and we still had to get him back out, so we decided to turn around and appreciate a day in the woods and we will go back and leave Tonka at home (I did really enjoy having him with us. A much shorter walk and he would have been just fine) and I will wear socks that my shoes don't eat.

In typical Sarah fashion, there are a ton of pictures, but I don't know how to narrow them down to only a few when the earth is filled with such beauty and when I have such a good looking family. Here are our pictures from the day.

Heading into the woods.

see how the water shapes the rocks. This is something that I have always found really fascinating. My favorite place around here to really take in the power of water to shape its landscape is Three Forks in Clayton where 3 rivers converge into one. The water is loud, it's powerful and there are numerous whirlpools where the rocks have been shaped by the powerful water.

kids are wondering how cold the water was. It wasn't so cold that they weren't afraid of falling in, but it was cold enough that I was worried about them falling in and complaining the whole way back to Athens about how cold they were... (you know how mama's think.)

This is a cool little spot where people over some time have added rocks. Naturally, we added some...

These are the lower falls that we did make it to.

I really like this picture because Jason does these 10 second dance parties from time to time and he looks like he's having one on those slippery rocks.

See I really was there...