The leaves are all down now, but a few weeks ago when it wasn’t too chilly and the woods were still vibrant we took a little afternoon excursion up to High Falls State Park. We hiked the 2.5 mile “Tranquil Trail” and then walked down to the lower falls. With winter approaching, it got dark faster than expected and we had to leave by six.
You can read an article I wrote about our State Parks tour that was recently published over at whaun.com
My dad is a big history buff so I knew FDR’s Little White House in Warm Springs, GA was something he would love. It is Georgia’s most visited State Historic Site and rightly so as it has a great museum & facilities.
My brother Philip suffers from a disability that requires him to wear braces when he walks and he has to use a wheelchair when it comes to longer distances. It was neat to see the braces Roosevelt wore
in his day (the best of the best at that time) and compare them to those Philip had on today. Medical science has made leaps and bounds in the last 70 years and Philip is much more comfortable thanks to that! In fact, even his wheel chair is 100x better than those Roosevelt used – who’d have thought you could improve so much on the simple concept of “wheel+chair” so much.
Labor Day is the only time of year when the pools that Roosevelt used during his time at Warm Springs are filled. The last time we visited the pools were empty, but today they had crystal clear, warm, spring water in them. 
Both Trey and Philip were very tempted to get in!
One advantage of having a Friends of Georgia State Parks membership is that you and 6 others get into any historic site for free. Today we saved $32 – that’s almost half of the cost of the annual membership! Don’t you want one?
My camera club friend Weldon Marsh was videoing when we had our cookout at High Falls State Park to celebrate the end of our state parks tour. He recently edited the footage into a short, mini-documentary and put it online. Enjoy!
The best Georgia State Park to visit that is under an hour’s drive from Macon is Sprewell Bluff. We took our visiting Minnesotan friends (the Joslins) there for a picnic and some fun in the Flint River.
Hugo and Trey had a blast in the water and the adults spent a lot of time stacking rocks (like we’ve done there before). Before leaving we hiked up to the lookout point to get a great view of the river bend as the sun started to go down.
To celebrate our having visited all of Georgia’s State Parks & Historic sites within a year, we had a cookout at High Falls State Park and invited all our Georgia friends. Heidi friends from work came, my camera club friends attended, our buddies from church showed up, and even some old friends from our college years at Carson-Newman College were there!
The biggest surprise was Becky Kelley, director of Georgia’s State Parks, showed up with her husband and a family that visited 30 parks in 30 days last year. She presented me with some State Park swag and made me an official volunteer.
It was a fun time of hanging out with friends and enjoying the park’s facilities. Some folks explored the falls to take photos, the kids all enjoyed the playground, and a few others went hiking down along the water. At the end of the day we were all exhausted and had way too much leftover food to take home.
