The trip was the first leg of our good friends' cross-country move. Alan and Martha are moving to Portland, Oregon.

The park was beautiful--some highlights:

Alan, Martha, and Sarah Jane:

Camping with cooks has its benefits, and we ate extremely well the whole time--from bratwurst with expertly prepared home fries to pancakes with maple syrup, mojo-marinated flatiron steaks with mixed veggies and yellow rice, omelets, hash browns, and of course, brown bread in a can. Martha was nice enough to share her granny's chicken and dumplings, and Alan let us sample his Memaw's orange marmalade.

Speaking of good eating, we were excited to find that scuppernongs and muscadines grew wild on the trail and near the campsite:

After Alan and Martha left we ate dinner at a pizza joint on Lake Rabun called Louie's. We were the only ones there and therefore got special attention from Louie's dog, T-Bone:

T-Bone was pretty much the closest we got to wildlife on our trip, however. We didn't see much as far as animal life on the trails or in the campsite. We saw a skink on a rock and a hummingbird visited us during breakfast one morning. Other than that it was pretty quiet.

On the way home, we stopped at a local tourist attraction that Martha and I found on Monday, a little store called "Goats on the Roof" named, predictably, for the goats that live on the roof.