Once Upon A Time.....

I did a lot of things. All the things. But not really. Actually not at all. I've been pretty lax about doing all the things. But I've done lots of things. And I finally have the pictures off my camera and into a computer so I can blog about them!

Forever and a day ago (it feels like), I went to my company's HR conference in "the ghost town Banning in Georgia's only lost gorge" so it's really a miracle I made it out alive. Also, I want to move there. So there's that.

What's this? What's this?!

Pretty leaves. Much color. Yaaaass.

Old abandoned village? NBD.

The old paper mill across the river

that I did end up crossing barefoot with my 

fancy pants all rolled up.

#howdoiresponsibleadult?

I actually took a video of myself while I was hiking but blogger won't take it so HAH. No video for you. Basically I was documenting my possible-last-moments as a living human. I didn't get out hiking till almost 7 o'clock and I really wanted to make it to the old mill but it was getting darkish and I was only wearing my strappy sandals and I had left my phone charging in my room. So basically every idiotic thing you should never do for hiking. In a ghost town. It probably wouldn't have mattered if I did have my cell phone anyway cuz there was little to no reception even up at the lodge, let alone a quarter mile out into the middle of the woods. 

I had no way to tell the time, but I just looked in the properties of the video and it was nearing on 7:50 when I finally decided I'd better turn around rather than get stuck in the dark of the woods without a companion, shoes, phone, or flashlight. I had only gone about a tenth of the way back before I ran into a few guys from the same conference group as me headed out the way I was going so I felt much better tagging along and going further. 

This was about the time I just took my shoes off.

Which was extremely helpful in crossing the river.

It was mossy but not slick mossy,

so it gave me this little grippy carpet to stabilize my footing.

Marine dude (in orange) had a hard time

with his sneakers slipping.

Lulz.

There's some scaffolding, 

results of the attempted renovations.

But it would be so expensive to get it presentable again,

nobody has really put forth the effort yet.

#Hopefindsacause

Because it wasn't creepy enough yet.

If I'd only had a flashlight, there would have been much more exploring. But without the flash on my camera it was terribly, overwhelmingly dark in there.

The sun completely set while we were headed back so I'm really lucky I didn't break anything or cut myself on anything. I even took a response video to my "farewell" video that wouldn't upload earlier.

So that was my Georgia adventure. I'd love to go back to the same lodge for a vacation sometime later in life. I think Mark would enjoy it and it would be fun to go just for fun.
Oh! And the ziplining is LEGIT. We got to do a medium sized course and, I mean, I'm not bragging but I was pretty good at it. Not that there's much to actually be good at...

You'd zip along through the canopy

between these little treehouse posts.

We can pretend I actually visited the moon of Endor, right? 

It's basically the same thing.

They also claim to have the Guinness World Record

for the longest zipline in the world.

They've clocked people going 80mph down it.

You can't really see it but at the tippy top of that hill of trees

is the starting point for the zipline.

It goes all the way down, past the lodge,

and I never even saw the end point. 

#newlifegoalacquired

I also had east coast barbeque and it was....different. Tasty, but not exactly what I expect when you hear "barbeque". Like, you know, barbeque sauce. That would've been beneficial. 

Stay tuned for Disneyland, nuclear bombs, corn mazes, and general life updates!