End of 2016–Georgia

After having a great time in Virginia, I headed to Georgia to visit family, friends and doctors!  As I usually do, I stayed at Fort Yargo state park for a couple of weeks in November.   Then I headed to the north Georgia mountains and stayed in Dillard while visiting  my mom in mid – late November.

I was in Dillard when the South East had a lot of wildfires and a couple of the fires were too close!  One of the fires was 6 – 8 miles away from my RV park so we had a good bit of smoke depending on the wind.  Another fire was not far from my mom’s condo.

Sunrise, but this is smoke not fog!

Sunset, again not fog!

The wind was keeping the smoke away from my side of the road!!

They used helicopters to get water from a lake and drop it over some of the fires.  This was taken out of my mothers sunroof as we were driving down the road.

For a couple of weeks in December, I went back to Jekyll Island.  This is a campground that is not one of my favorites, but I love the area so I put up with the campground!

While there, they had an extremely high tide.

On some of my bike rides I saw several Hooded Mergansers, both male and female.

Bridge on the bike path -

Another bridge on a foggy day -

Skimmers, one of my favorite sea birds, taking a bath. 

After Jekyll, I headed back to Dillard where we had a family gathering for Christmas.

Wow, I am late but I finally finished up 2016.  In Jan and Feb of 2017 I am visiting state parks along the Gulf of Mexico in Florida and Alabama.  I am currently in Topsail Hill Preserve state park where it is  65 degrees, so as soon as I post this blog I am going to bike to the beach.  

Max Meadows, VA

Once again I am way behind.  I am going to try to finish up 2016 in the next couple of blogs. 

I stopped at Max Meadows, VA on my way south Oct 14 - 20.  I wanted to ride the New River Trail in Southern Virginia again.  This has become one of my favorite rail trails.  I rode parts of it 4 times while there. I still haven’t done the Foster Falls end yet, I hope to do that part soon.

I also went back and did the Virginia Creeper trail.  Again, I took the shuttle to the top and then basically coasted down hill for 17 miles.  The last couple of miles you do have to pedal more!  One of my long term goals is to get in better shape so that I can ride up hill  and then back down.  Pictures from the trail are below.

Another day, I visited Grayson Highlands State park and did a short hike.  During the hike, I saw several wild ponies that the park is known for.  While the ponies are wild (although too used to humans), they were released by the forest service in 1975 to help control the growth of brush along the bald mountain tops.  The first picture is on the drive to the park.  The leaves were close to peak color.