It's Fall up there - DAY 3

Got up and out asap on Sunday.  I figured I'd get a few hours in before having to head home.  There's quiet in the early morning, and a chill, and fog, and a solitude that is restorative.  In the "pictures don't do it justice" file, I deposit the following shot:  cool, dead quiet, and light low enough that my headlights are still visibly illuminating the road:

I recognized this rockpile from my brief research.  It's supposedly the grave of a Native American, passers-by add a stone for luck.  I didn't read the sign.

A lookout on rt60 on the way to Suches from the south.  Again, the chill and quiet of this scene lend a sense of being that's hard to articulate. 

At Suches I went west on rt180 (again), and decided to see Vogel State Park on my descent down to rt19.  A short way down the access road I hit a pull-out and walked down to the water.  Near a bench I noticed this (dead) tree, which seems to have kept the woodpeckers busy.

I sat on the bench and took this pic looking back towards the entrance, and noticed that I might finally be able to take some pics that express the calm still... the early quiet I'd been so fascinated by. 

I quickly took a series of pics which wound up being "trip-makers".  First, a close look reveals that this is not a picture of trees, it's a picture of water shot upside-down.  Note the few floaters and the ripples at the margin where the trees meet the sky:

Then a series of Rorschach tests, one of which is now the wallpaper on my work computer.  I let Apple "enhance" these for me, but they are not unreasonable HDRs or anything.

Leaving the park, I did another big loop of 19-180-17-75A.  On the home stretch, I came to the turn-off for 348 and couldn't resist.  I hoped to get some foggy pics from the overlook I'd visited the previous day, but it was already around 10AM, and a VERY slow van in front of me created more misery than I could stand.  I U-turned a few miles up, just in time to catch a VERY slow car coming down... a frustrating diversion, which made it easier to "call it" and head back to camp to pack up.

Back at camp, things went fairly smoothly and quickly.  I had shore services disconnected, camper packed, gear stowed, trailer hitched, and bike loaded by about 11:45AM.  I met an 8 week-old Lab puppy and decided it must be my last Easter egg in north Georgia.  Rig, ready to roll:

Back to reality:  a traffic clog outside Atlanta.

I drug everything into the RV park at about 9:30PM, then unloaded the bike in the dark and rode home.  Trailering the bike and using the truck camper is an awesome way to base-camp and ride day-loops.  On the minus side, the closest place worth going is an 8-hr drive away.