Dahlonega, GA

We spent most of the day in Dahlonega, GA, a small, college town (North Georgia College & State University) in the foothills/on the front range of the Blue Ridge Mountains about 50 miles or so north of Atlanta. It's a beautiful place with a quaint, historic downtown square filled with fun restaurants and shops. There is fantastic trout fishing and an abundance of other outdoor activities, including hiking (the Appalachian Trial begins about 10 miles west of town)/camping/canoing/kayaking/biking/etc. There are also a number of wineries, art galleries, potters, etc., along with the Holly Theater (with a children's theater) and 13 local festivals every year (The Bear on the Square festival brings over 200,000 people to town the third weekend in April!). To discover more about this great town, check out the flash version of the "newcomers guide" to Dahlonega, click here (really a cool resource and gives lots of helpful info about the town and region). Anyway, Dahlonega is on our short list of potential planting sites, and so we wanted to spend a day there as a family hanging out. Here are two pictures of the kids from our visit.

With the black bear in front of a really cool outdoors store.
Yes, there are real black bears in the mountains of North Georgia.

We ate at the Crimson Moon (on the left) restaurant/coffee house,
which has live music 5 nights a week. Most on the buildings on the square were built in the 1800s, with the old courthouse in the center (now the Gold Museum- you can still find gold in the streams!), c. 1836.