Over the fourth of July holiday weekend, Joe and I decided to go on some adventures and see what Georgia had to offer. On July 3rd we drove up to Cleveland which is the home of Babyland General Hospital: Home of the Cabbage Patch Kids! I had see billboards advertising Babyland, but didn’t really know what it was all about. But I know I love Cabbage Patch dolls, so I had to check it out. Luckily Joe is nice enough to indulge me.
When we finally got to the location, it was a little disappointing. On the website you see a huge Southern type plantation house, and I assumed we were going there, but if I would have looked closer, that’s the new hospital and isn’t done being built yet. So we ended up at the current location which was basically a converted house. I suppose that made it better for the experience of weird Georgia.
When you get inside you can check out some exciting photos of the Cabbage Patch Kids in action, like the mars kid and my favorite, the picture with Xavier Roberts, the creator of CPK.
Once inside the hospital you start in the newborn section, and Joe looks thrilled to be there. Throughout the hospital you see different styles of CPK, they went through several versions before settling on what you can buy today.
After walking through a few rooms of CPK’s doing things like going to school, you end up in a large room where there are piles of various CPK’s. I guess one interesting thing is that at of the CPK’s in the hospital are available for adoption.
Of course there is a patch of CPK’s, but they are just the heads. It’s a little creepy, but while you are there it’s fun. Perhaps the most exciting part is when they have a “birth” of a CPK. Usually it will happen when someone creates a custom one, which I guess they can make that day. They go through the whole birthing process of doing an ultra sound and checking the status of the baby, then she pulls it out of the cabbage patch. It’s silly, but if I were to get a CPK I would like to see it born too :)
I was able to resist purchasing a CPK that day, but if we go to the new hospital, I don’t know if I could handle not getting one.
After the thrill of Cleveland, GA and Babyland we decided to just head over to Helen. We didn’t know what we were getting into. Driving through North Georgia was nice, it’s a little hilly so it makes for some nice scenery. On the way to Helen we ran into some traffic and couldn’t figure out why it was so bad. Once we got to Helen we realized that main street Helen is the same as the highway, so traffic gets jammed up pretty quickly.
Helen is an Alpine inspired resort town. They have cutely designed buildings and it almost feels quaint, but then you realize you aren’t in the Alps, but in Georgia, with Georgia people.
The big thing in the summer is tubing down the river. There were throngs of people clamoring to get on one of the various bus shuttles that would take them to the top so they could float down the river. It’s definitely a fun spot for a quick family get away, but it wasn’t smart we were there over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
On our way out I notice a wood sign painted with the words “model railroad ---->”. I thought Joe would feel better about seeing some model trains, so we stopped by. No one was visiting the train shop, so we were a little worried, maybe it wasn’t that exciting. We went inside and met the owner who was straight from Germany. He was super excited about his trains and said that Charlamane’s Kingdom was just inside the double doors, but we would have to pay $5 to get inside. We decided to go for it. And we were not disappointed! The place was huge! There were tons of things to look at and explore, and the details were fun to see. Unfortunately it needed some maintenance, some of the trains weren’t going and there were a few model trees down, but over all it was a fun thing to see. We probably spent close to an hour in there checking things out.
Once we had our fill of model trains we decided to head over to Dahlonaga where there is a gold mine museum.
The museum was fine. They have you watch a little video that describes why Dahlonaga had a gold boom and how it affected Georgia. Then you can walk around and see a few items from the time, like the huge water cannons they came up with the break down the sides of the hills/mountains to get at the gold faster. Dahlonaga also has a cute little town center. It’s actually centered around the mine museum building, there are lots of cute antique shops and candy stores.
Overall our explorations of Georgia were fun. We saw some weird stuff and people, but that’s all part of the game. We enjoyed our drive and seeing new things. I highly recommend doing something similar in your area.
