As promised we eased into the day. We had breakfast at the hotel then loaded the car and drove downtown. Joyce wandered the shops, the few that were open, and I wandered a bit and took a couple of pictures.
According to a handout Dahlonega was the site of the first major US gold rush.
Today it is just one more tourist trap with some nice old buildings. There is a nice fudge shop so it has has some redeeming social value. Leaving Dahlonega we drove over to Toccoa. We went to the Stevens County Museum and dropped of the copies of the drawings Dad had of the tank retriever and the small steel house like the one we lived in while we were there.
When we were here last time we had not been able to find the Traveler's Rest, an old stage line rest stop. I saw a "to the Traveler's Rest" sign as we were looking for a place to have lunch and decided to persist and find this elusive place.
We did find it, but it is only open on Fridays and weekends so we could not tour it. It was a neat looking place even just looking at the outside.
From a sign there, "Traveler's Rest was built around 1815 to serve as a wayside inn for travelers on the Unicoi Turnpike, a busy thoroughfare that connected the Tugaloo and Tennessee Rivers." We went back to town and found a Taco Bell where we had a light lunch. We made another brief stop at the museum downtown then went for a quick look at Horseshoe Bend and the plant before continuing south and east. The large factory building has been torn down and removed since we were here last time - shades of Cat in East Peoria. I did notice a couple of Tournapulls rusting away on one side of the concrete slab where the factory once was so we stopped and took a couple of pictures.
Unfortunately, they were inside a fence so I could not get very close.Back on the road we found our route took us through Washington. We did not find any of you at home so we dropped by the Washington Historical Museum.
It was getting late so we did not try to go in. I don't think it was open anyway.We continued on to Thomson, GA where we found another Holiday Inn Express. This one was too close to the interstate so the price was higher, but at least we could walk to dinner.
