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I was touring North Georgia with my parents on one of our trips to get apples. We decided to go early enough to make a few stops. One of them was at Talluah Gorge up around Toccoa. We pulled over to a parking place near the gorge and dusty (my grandson) and I walked down a trail a little way. It was very steep there and I was afraid to go far with dusty because he might fall. Anyway we found a spot there and sat down and was lookin across the gorge. One the other side, of the almost shear face of the mountain, two people were climbing up the side. We sat on a rock and watched for a while, and they weren't moving very fast, just seemed to be hanging there. Then we got back in the car and drove across the gorge and stopped on the other side. We walked back over the bridge and looked down into the gorge. It was beautiful! We could see water washing over the dam like waves and down over the rocks way below us. Then we drove on to Taccoa Falls. This waterfall is located near a college in North Georgia. We had to go through a gift shop to get to the falls. There was an entrance fee of course. Coming out of the gift shop we could see the shear side of the mountain and the waterway beside us was a swift and bubbling stream flowing over rocks down toward the college. Shortly we were at the bottom of the falls. There are huge rocks all around, some are like small monoliths. We found a big rock that was fairly flat and decided to sit there and enjoy the view. The top of the falls was very high up and the sound of the water was deafening. Sometimes you could make a slight move and see how the sun made rainbows in the waterspray. We sat there and enjoyed the site for a while. The falls are very high and the water comes straight down. As we started to leave there was a plaque beside the trail. It was a memorial to people that had died in the flood when a dam burst above the falls. The flood started at night when most everyone was in bed asleep. The placque told about how the flood was so sudden that some couldn't be reached in time to save them. There was also a list of the 126 people that lost their lives that night. It was very sad to read the story and the list of names. As we started back we saw the trail to the top of the falls. It was kind of steep but not too bad to climb. My mom and dad and dusty went with me. When we got to the top there was a dangerous step down to the water to a small island there in the middle. There were about four or five college students there too. We decided not to disturb them, also a good excuse not to take that scary step down. So we turned around, after a good look down the fall, and started back. But I was thinking about that stream at the top. It wasn't very wide but when it flooded it really did some damage. We left soon after getting back down the mountain trail, but I often think about what happened when a beautiful waterfall became deadly! neon_sapphire |