Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Georgia Travelog #23
Helton Creek - Saturday, 12 Apr 2025, 6pm

Today has been another day of driving around the Appalachian Mountains of north Georgia, but unlike yesterday— when it rained on us most of the day— today has been beautiful. As a result we've had a fairly packed day.

Once again we started out from the Holiday Inn Express in Dawsonville— except this morning we checked out. Tonight we're not done 'til we get to Atlanta! But first there was so much else.

Today our first stop was in Helen, the over-the-top charming kitschy shrieking tourist trap of a town made up to look like a German alpine village. We thought it might be a good place to get some morning eats! Alas the German bakery we'd spotted yesterday was really a German confectionery. Meaning, most of what they sell ready-to-eat is sugary sweets. I didn't feel like a Bavarian cream donut with a side of cheese danish for breakfast, so we sulked back out to the car where I ate a protein bar as we continued our drive.

Next up was Anna Ruby Falls a bit north of Helen. This falls blew me away. It's reached by a totally paved trail. It's steep but doesn't have stairs like Amicalola Falls (which we visited Thursday). Its tourist-friendliness isn't what blew me away, though. It's that up at the end of the canyon is a double falls. Two different creeks falls the back wall of the canyon and merge at the bottom.

After the falls we doubled back to Helen for lunch. Yes, we thought eating in the tourist trap town would be fun! We scrupulously avoided all the tourist trappy places, though, and shared a pizza at a low-key pizzeria. Then we went back to that bakery we skipped out of in the morning, because Bavarian cream donuts with a side of cheese danish.

Our next stop was Upper Chattahoochee Campground to hike to Horse Trough Falls. This is one where the drive to get there turned into an adventure. The Apple Maps piped through my mobile phone into the car's infotainment system recommended a slightly different route than the Google Map I've embedded above. Yeah, make your jokes about Apple Maps; but this is the first time they've steered me wrong. We wound up taking a much longer drive on dirt Forest Service roads than we needed to. And a few times it took interpolating between Apple Maps and AllTrails to figure out the right way to go. But we did get there, safely, and had a bit of fun making it an offroad adventure. In a rental car.

Once we got to the trailhead for Horse Trough Falls— and OMG, what a terrible name— we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. Maybe other people got a bum steer from Apple Maps, too, but couldn't find their way out of it like I did. 🤣

The falls were a mostly level 1/2 mile walk from the parking lot. It could have been even shorter but the actual Upper Chattahoochee Campground was still closed for the season... despite signs from last year saying it'd reopen March 15. Oops, maybe the people responsible for reopening the campground got sacked in one of DOGE's mass firings. 😰

Horse Trough was another falls that blew me away. It wasn't as epic as Anna Ruby but it was still way more than I expected out here, at what felt like the (horse's) ass end of nowhere.

After Horse Trough we switched gears a bit and did a non-waterfall hike. Instead of a falls we visited the top of a mountain. And not just any mountain, but Brasstown Bald, elev. 4,784', the highest peak in Georgia. It was late, almost 4pm, when we got to the visitors center a few hundred feet below the summit. I wondered if I should've dropped it from the list to save time for other hikes but I chose instead to trust in the continued sunny weather and sunset just after 8pm to give us more time to play. We had a good late-afternoon visit up there and still had time for two more waterfalls!

Trahlyta Falls wasn't so much a hike as a jump-out-of-the-car-and-take-pictures situation. Yes, there was a hike we could do, but it was in a state park that had a lot of construction going on. It was a headache to deal with. So we drove out of the park and back around to an unmarked pulloff on the highway where we snapped pictures from across the creek canyon.

Finally we made it over to Helton Creek Falls. It was only about 15 minutes from Trahlyta, though it may have taken longer as once more we had to drive a few miles on a dirt road to get to a falls. Once more, though, the falls exceeded my expectations. I was ready for a maybe 20-foot tall falls. Instead we got a 100' tall falls in multiple drops!

Georgia Travelog #25
Atlanta - Sunday, 13 Apr 2025, 8am

"We've upgraded you to a suite," is a phrase I love to hear as a frequent traveler. It's not always a significant upgrade, though. Sometimes the suite is barely bigger than a regular room. Sometimes it's got more space but no extra furniture— so I'm just looking at a lot of empty floor and walls. Other times, like this time, it's an older, kind of worn-down hotel. Here's a walkthrough of our upgraded room at a hotel just outside ATL airport:



Other than the noise outside the room (and flashing lights) from the parking lot that lasted until past 11pm, other... not-so-enjoyable... aspects of our stay included a slow line at the front desk and slow, creaky elevators. I mean, when the door doesn't even open and close smoothly, you wonder about the mechanical soundness of the lift and safety mechanisms. OTOH, once we closed the doors the sound from outside was muffled, and the bed was deliciously firm. I slept better than I did most of this past week on too-soft hotel mattresses.

Lest I sound like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, let me be clear that I do appreciate this upgrade. The extra space (and extra furniture!) was useful even on our one-night stay. As an elite benefit, it's nice. It's just that if I had a paid a lot of extra money for this suite... well, I'd probably wish I'd paid that money to get a nicer basic room at a nicer hotel.