Living well is not just drinking fine wines, eating at Michelin starred restaurants, and mingling with the “it” people. Sometimes, to truly live well, you have to escape all of the pretensions of the big cities and take to the mountains. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is located within one day’s drive of half of the population of the United States, but during the week I visited, I had it almost entirely to myself.
This entry is a little belated (ok, it’s really a lot belated), but I’d rather share it with you now than not at all. This week took place in January, just before Snowmageddon blanketed the entire northeastern United States with a ridiculous amount of snow. I drove to the park from Atlanta, leaving on a Wednesday, early in the morning to avoid the reliably awful traffic that Atlanta is famous for. Around ten AM, I made a stop at Amicalola Falls State Park in northern Georgia. The park is gorgeous, and on the day I visited, nearly completely deserted. Amicalola Falls is an incredible 729 foot cascading waterfall, one of the tallest in the nation. The steep, one mile hike to the top of the falls was exhausting but well worth the effort. The temperature was in the low 30s and despite the sunny, cloudless weather, the icicles that had accumulated during the night were still thick and hanging like sparkling chandeliers from the branches overhanging the frothing water of the falls. It was an incredible sight, and definitely one that was nice to have entirely to myself without any tourists around. The view from the top of the falls was incredible, and the view from just below it even better. As I stood on the bridge that crossed the falls, railings and floorboards coated with ice, the roaring of the falls and the swirling clouds of chilled mist completely enveloped me.
