Moving to "Georgia on My Mind"

After hanging out near urban areas of Alabama like Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Montgomery, we were ready for some time far from the city. So we landed at a Corps of Engineers park along the Chattahoochee River--as far as one can be from anything urban. We also crossed the state line when we crossed the Chattahoochee river, so this is our first stop in Georgia.

Our campsite at Cotton Hill Campground is along a reservoir made by damming the Chattahoochee river. (Typing Chattahoochee is almost as much fun as saying it, so Denisa is looking for reasons to use the word.) We are sitting under some very tall trees here, with a view of the lake out of our side window.

You know the trees are big when their pine cones are as big as a loaf of bread.

Being here in the spring, we are enjoying the blooming azaleas. We often see bushes in yards that are around three feet tall, but this massive wild azalea bush by our campground is closer to ten feet. As Denisa stands besides these blooms she can hear the constant buzz of an army of bees gathering pollen.

There are different colors of the azaleas, but Denisa's favorites are the bright fuchsia.

It's amazing that these flowers grow wild here. We are also enjoying the spring-blooming dogwood trees. Being from Oklahoma, we have never seen these trees before.

They seem to be at peak bloom right now, and they give bright white flashes of light against the dark green trees around them.

One of our neighbors taught us that dogwood trees always bloom around Easter. Their four-petal flowers form the shape of a cross, with the nail imprints at the end of each blossom.

We are also enjoying the wild wisteria that is blooming now.

These purple flowers are just beginning to bloom, draped over trees and growing wild in the forest.

So we are enjoying seeing blossoms new to us in our first spring east of the Mississippi. We are also enjoying our camp site in the forest next to the Chattahoochee. Mark is relaxing with a book after he worked at splitting enough wood for our stay here.

We had a bratwurst supper cooked over the campfire, finished with an 8-marshmallow smore. Mark found that those huge pine cones turn into luminescent cones when he added them to the camp fire.

So we are settling into our camp site at Cotton Hill campground, enjoying a look at a new area of the country on the Chattahoochee River in spring time.