A beautiful Fall day

The sky was incredibly blue this morning, with no clouds or humidity. When I awoke it was quite cool and felt like Autumn had really come. Cindy and Kate got up relatively early and we headed for north Georgia. We headed up 575 toward Canton, Jasper and Ellijay. We made Ellijay by ten thirty and turned off 575, down Ga 52 toward Dahlonega.

The apple stands were busy with tourists from Atlanta and elsewhere and we stopped at the Hillcrest Orchard and parked next to a thick hedge of ragweed. Exiting the car, we walked into the store and picked about a bushel of apples of varying sizes, shapes, colors and varieties. Buying the apples, we also bought two styrofoam bowls of apple slices, covered with caramel sauce. Afterward, we sat out on the bench in front of the store and ate our slices of apple, covered with caramel.

Afterward, we drove on down Highway 52 toward Dahlonega and finally saw signs for Burt's Pumpkin Farm. We pulled in to the parking lot and grabbed a wheelbarrow and entered the yard with all the pumpkins, gourds, squash and other assorted Fall accoutrement. As we looked over the huge yard full of pumpkins, we first saw the very large orange pumpkins, large enough to sleep a young toddler. I was reminded of "Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well." I thought, perhaps, that I could cut open this particular pumpkin, pull out the seeds and actually sleep a small person quite adequately.

We ended up not buying the large size pumpkin. Instead, we bought various varieties of pumpkins: orange, blue, white, orange and green, striped, tiny, and others. As I watched Cindy and Kate inspect and various pumpkins and place them in their wheelbarrow. Meanwhile, I stood against the back wall of the pumpkin store and smelled the spicy smell of pumpkin bread being cooked in the kitchen behind me. I had to have some of the bread.

By the time we had enough pumpkins in our wheelbarrow, I suggested to Cindy and Kate that we could use some of that pumpkin bread, which we did buy. Later, we drove on into Dahlonega and found a perfectly good Irish pub right next to our parking space. We had to make use of it.

So we sat under the television set showing the Alabama-Kentucky game, and drank Guinness and ate our sandwiches. It was delightful and the temperature outside was delightful. Oddly, we were inside a screened in portion of the patio, which had open areas above the screens and where there could have been a door. We decided that this was a test for mosquito intelligence. The smart ones watched the dumb ones slam into the screen and then went around the screen. Meanwhile, the dumb ones just slammed their tiny bodies into the screen and watched as the smart ones speeded around the screen and feasted on the bodies of the patrons of the restaurant.

After lunch, we headed down Ga 400 to the Prime Outlet Mall in Dawsonville. It was a long day and quite a bit of shopping. Georgia lost to LSU. W&L lost to Randolph-Macon. Thank goodness, the time together was worthwhile. Fall is more than just football games on television. No, sometimes you need to go to the game in person.