A little bit of Georgia

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.

Exploring Georgia

Georgia Guidestones

While Annie was visiting we decided it was time to check out the Georgia Guidestones. We first learned about the Guidestones when my brother Ben sent me a link to an article in Wired. We thought it would be interesting to check out, and it wasn’t too far away, or so we thought! If you are interested in learning about the Guidestones, I recommend you read the article from Wired.
On our way to the Guidestones we had a little adventure. The wikipedia article gives the GPS coordinates to the stones, so we mapped our route from there through Google and ended up taking some very interesting roads. We passed by these awesome play places, I thought it was worth taking a picture of.

One road we went down seemed very scary, it started out paved, but took us by a very scary looking house. It eventually turned unpaved, but we decided to continue anyway. We drove on that for maybe half a mile and then came to a break in the road where a small stream crossed the road, we were a little nervous to take the Jetta through it, but we kept on going. Eventually we made it back onto some paved roads and continued winding our way deeper into rural Georgia. It was a little scary, but then all of the sudden the Guidestones appeared.

The Guidestones are located on the highest point in Elbert County. They are built in Elbert County because RC Christian decided that the granite there was the finest in the country. The stones were a mystery from the beginning, who commissioned them? where did the money come from? I didn’t really know what to expect, but when we got there I was really excited. We showed up and there was one other car there. I was actually surprised. They eventually left and we had about 30 minutes alone and then another car showed up. They said they just saw them from the road and wanted to see what it was.
The feeling at the Guidestones is weird. It’s so quiet since it’s surrounded by farmland and it’s just so bizarre, you almost feel like you should whisper.
Here is the plaque that describes a little bit of the story:

It indicates that “each of the four sides of the capstone features the statement of cautionary guidance to humankind translated into Babylonian Cuneiform, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, to ‘Let Those Be Guidestones To Reason.’ The guidelines are carved into the eight faces of the four outer stones in English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. In English, the guidelines specify the follow:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature     Guide reproduction wisely-improving fitness and diversity   Unite humanity with a living new language    Rule passion – Faith – Tradition – And all things with tempered reason    Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts    Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court    Avoid petty laws and useless officials    Balance personal  rights with social duties    Prize Truth – Beauty – Love – Seeking harmony with the infinite    Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature
Unfortunately a few weeks before we went some jerks decided to throw some goo on the stones. It’s obviously not the first time they have been vandalized, but usually it’s just paint which can be washed off. This goo doesn’t come off very easily from granite.
Here are a bunch of pictures, but you can check out more in my Picasa album.

Georgia Guidestones

     

Annie’s visit = more exploring Georgia

Annie came to visit us over Labor Day. She missed out on the family visit last year in April, so it was nice to have her come out. Annie didn’t have many requests of things to do, so we just went on another adventure through Georgia and took her along with us.
We had been wanting to go to the Mayfield Dairy and check out their tour. It’s local to Braselton so it was a good place to start. The tour itself was fine. We saw a silly video, but it really made us     crave some milk and ice cream, then we put on awesome hair nets to go into the processing part of the building. At this location they process the milk and fill various sized cartons. They also fill other company’s milk products. Mayfield milk’s claim to fame is that they use a system involving an aerovac that uses steam to rid the milk of any contaminate that may be present, including smells and tastes that come from the cow’s diet. By going through this process the milk is more pure and tastes better. They also package their milk in yellow containers. They say this helps prevent damage from the UV rays that can taint the milk. I will have you know, that although it feels weird to buy a yellow gallon of milk, it’s worth it. I totally agree with Mayfield, their milk is superior to other milk, but of course it comes at a price. Currently a gallon of milk in Georgia costs around $2.20, but a gallon of Mayfield milk costs around $4.50! When milk was even more expensive last year, a gallon of Mayfield could be over $6! It’s really good though, and when you come visit, we’ll spring for a gallon so you can try it.
After the tour you can’t get out of the gift shop without buying some ice cream. It’s fun because they have a porch with rocking chairs that you can relax on and eat you ice cream. Of course it was delicious.

I guess this is the Mayfield mascot.


After filling up on some ice cream we took the scenic route to Stone Mountain. We didn’t want to spend a lot of time there, but we hadn’t been to the top of the actual stone mountain and we figured that would be enough for Annie.
On our way up the tram we saw this sweet tattoo:
  
Here are some tram shots of the carving on the granite:

We hung around the top of the mountain for about 20 minutes. It was actually pretty hot up there and it didn’t take long to look at it all. You can always walk up or down the mountain if you don’t want to take the tram, but we were feeling lazy.
    
The one thing Annie for sure wanted to do was to see the Bodies exhibit. So we made a point of getting down to Atlantic Station with enough time to see Bodies, and do the Dialog in the Dark that they had going as well. The Bodies exhibit was really interesting. I thought I would get sicked out early on, but I was able to make it through the whole thing, I just had to focus on it being interesting and not focus on that fact that these were real bodies and body parts. It was just amazing to see the various parts and systems that our bodies have. There was a section about the nervous system and they had a brain with all of the nerves that follow down the spine, and then just a body shaped vein pile. It was amazing that they could single out all of these various parts of the body. I thought that the section of the fetuses was extremely interesting. To see the growth an embryo goes through to become a fetus and then an actual baby, amazing!
The Dialog in the Dark was also really great. I didn’t think I would like it, but it was actually quite interesting. You started by getting a walking stick that blind people use and then moving into a room to get settled in. We all were sitting on cubes that were lit up and while the guide was describing what would be happening the lights started getting dimmer and dimmer and then it was dark. You literally could not see your hand in front of your face. We were then told to stand and move toward the raining in the middle of the room, once there our new guide came to the room to introduce herself. All of the guides for the experience were visually impaired. The goal of the exercise was for us to follow the sound of our guides voice and experience various environments, like a park, a grocery store, a boat ride, walking through a city, and ordering a drink at a bar. All of it was really quite interesting. I wasn’t as explorative as I perhaps should have been, Joe really got into it, but I was feeling timid and definitely out of my comfort zone. But the entire experience was really great. Out guide (I think her name was Cynthia) had lost her site and was learning how to live life again on her own. She was quite independent, but she said that she definitely has a system, and has learned to trust people. The thing she hates the most is when people just grab her arm or whatever to help her across the street. She knows they mean well, but she’s fully capable of getting across the street on her own, and it’s definitely uncomfortable to be touched without being asked first. All in all, it was a great experience, and if you have the opportunity I recommend you go.  Both exhibits are worth it.