Black Rock Mountain State Park - one of our new favorites!

We left Cherokee Campground in the rain. We generally don't travel in the rain, but we had reservations at Tallulah Gorge State Park. Mark has been driving these narrow and winding mountain roads in our car, and this day he maneuvered our 35-foot motor home over those same roads. We have a special GPS made for trucks and big RVs, and it sounds alerts to warn the driver about sharp curves in the road. We couldn't even count the number of those alerts we heard as we moved to our next destination. It was as if the GPS was giving us the subliminal message, "You big dummies--you shouldn't have a vehicle like this on a road like that!"

We also have to include a picture of the mowing process in this part of the mountains. In addition to horizontal mowers for the grass, they have vertical mowers that trim the brush and trees that are always trying to encroach over those narrow roads.

We got the motor home snugged into a long pull-through site in the state campground and waited out the rain. We would continue to get rain showers for the three nights of our stay. So that elusive permit to hike to the bottom of Tallulah Gorge that we tried to get during Blake's visit, never would materialize for three more days. The rocks could never dry out to make scrambling over the boulders at the bottom safe.

The good news is that all that rain is very good for the plants and waterfalls. We finally saw our first blooming wild hydrangea.

Since we had already seen most of Tallulah Gorge State Park with our son Blake, we explored another state park just 15 miles away--Black Mountain State Park. We would have camped there, but the approach road is filled with hair-pin turns and 25% grades that make driving a sizable motor home almost impossible. We could only imagine the subliminal message our GPS would have given us on that road! Therefore, they don't have camping sites big enough for us at Black Mountain. But it made a great place to drive our little car for a day trip.

At 3,446 feet, it is the highest state park in Georgia, and there is a beautiful view of the Appalachian Mountains from the visitor center. The rhododendrons are in full bloom at this elevation!

Denisa has determined that Black Rock Mountain has the most beautiful flowers of any state park we have visited on this journey to the east. The wild purple irises where at peak bloom, and she just happened to wear the same color today.

Even the mountain daisies are at full bloom, and we haven't seen them anywhere else. All these flowers, and we haven't even left the visitor center's parking lot! We also learned that the eastern continental divide is right at the entrance of the park. We were familiar with the continental divide in the mountains of Colorado, and didn't know that there was an eastern divide as well.

Following the advice from the ranger, we headed out on the 2.2 mile Tennessee Rock Trail loop. We were walking completely in the shade again this day. Wet and shaded is the perfect environment for ferns to grow, and they were everywhere. As Blake would say, this trail was completely fern-ished.

We love learning new things about this new (to us) part of the country. We had never heard of the tulip tree before, but they grow all over these Georgia mountains. They have the most interesting lyre-shaped leaves.

Mark likes to call them canoe trees, because the Native Americans found them to be the best trees to hollow out into a boat. Denisa prefers to call them tulip trees because they produce a tulip-like flower in the spring. We had never seen these flowers because it is a brief blooming period and it is almost impossible to see the blooms that are 100 feet off the ground in these tall trees. But this day we found some blooms on the trail that had just fallen out of the tulip tree. Denisa was pretty excited to see those flowers!

Mark just plays along with Denisa's excitement, still muttering that knowing that a tree would make a good canoe is more important should we ever be stranded on a remote Georgian island. Unique tree flowers won't float you off that island!

This hike was a good reminder that we are wandering God's wonders. It would be easy to see a simple plant like this from the top and dismiss it as plain.

But if we take the time to look carefully, there is a perfect line of dainty bell-shaped flowers hidden underneath. That is one of God's wonders to Denisa.

This hike was like that, and Denisa spent half of her time upside down looking under leaves. From the top, we could see little glimpses of pink . . .

But it took almost standing on our heads to see a delicate flower of beauty almost completely hidden from the top. There is a life lesson for us there.

In a few weeks this will also be a delicious walk in the woods. The blackberry bushes were huge and white with blooms.

We made it to the summit of Black Rock Mountain at 3,640 feet. Georgia mountains are about 10,000 feet shorter than the mountains we were hiking about a year ago in Colorado. But the hikes in Colorado also started at much higher elevations. Another difference is that summiting Colorado mountains means hiking above tree line, while all of our hikes here have been in the shade.

Close to that peak of Black Rock Mountain we came to a break in the trees so we could look out over the landscape that surrounds us. In the valleys we see patches of white and black that stretch on for acres. Those are plastic coverings over the soil on farms that are beginning to plant spring vegetables. The plastic will control the weeds around the plants and make them easier to harvest and care for.

We met a delightful couple at the observation point. We all agreed that hikers are some of the nicest people, and we exchanged taking pictures for each other with that dramatic back drop.

We are already impressed with Black Rock Mountain State Park. But then we discovered more beautiful flowers near its campgrounds. We had never seen these bright red rhododendrons before, nestled among the purple, pink and white blooms.

Mark has pointed out that Denisa used to get so excited at the sight of a mountain laurel. But after ten days of seeing so many, she can walk right by one without even gasping now. But she is once again gasping, because after all those white mountain laurels, we found a dark pink one at this state park.

That deserves a close up picture. How beautiful to find a new color!

Denisa is all smiles with her new flower discoveries. This is another new one--red and white mountain laurel that is so full of blooms the branches are bending to the ground.

One last picture of the rhododendrons just to show the quantities of blooms, and that those bushes can grow to ten feet tall. Mountain flowers are spectacular!

Denisa was on flower-overload, but we had one more stop to make before we left this state park. There is another trail that circles Black Rock Lake, and we drove the gravel road to get there. We found a teal green mountain lake nestled among the Appalachian foot hills.

The last picture of the day is proof of why Black Rock Mountain is now one of our favorite state parks. A trip here in May is stunning!