I've been bad

I haven't kept up with this blog like I should have. But you've got to understand that I'm from a completely different era than my co-workers. I'm at least 20 years older than most of them!

My friend Troy Heard keeps encouraging me, and I thank him for nagging me ever so gently!

The past two weeks, I've been on vacation. And then when I got back, I got bogged down by work. And, OK, it's been almost three weeks since I last wrote anything.

Vacation was wonderful. My brother, Fred, and his wife, Cheryl, own a time share and this year, decided to vacation in North Georgia. They picked a resort called Big Canoe, which is near Ellijay.

The first day, we went to Stone Mountain Park. It's been almost 10 years since I visited the park and I've never actually walked up or down the mountain. This time, we rode the cable car up and walked down. It was easier than I thought it would be, but you just have to watch your step.

This is my niece Jessica, on top of Stone Mountain. She just turned 20, and is a junior at the University of Florida. We picked her up at the airport in Atlanta before going to Stone Mountain.

The next day, we went to Big Canoe. But we stopped at the Ellijay Apple Festival first. I don't know why I didn't take photos there. Actually, it was a big arts and crafts fair with not much to do with apples.

On Sunday, we drove up to Blue Ridge, Ga., and rode the historic train to McCaysville, Ga. It was an absolutely gorgeous trip. The weather was perfect.

And then it was time to drive back to Atlanta to take Jess back to the airport so she can start classes again. It was raining Monday and it continue to rain on and off the rest of the time we were up in the mountains.

We went to Amicalola State Park one day. We ate lunch at the lodge and decided to walk down to the falls. It turned out there is the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls and each area has a parking lot. We were parked at the top. So we walked down to the bottom of the Lower Falls. This is Cheryl and Fred at the middle point of our walk.

I may have been able to walk to the middle, but I doubt that I could haved walked all the way back up. Cheryl is in worse shape than me, so we made Fred go back up and drive the car down and pick us up.

Isn't that what brothers are for? But then, we had to listen to him make fun of us the rest of the trip. I didn't care. My legs were really wobbly and I was tired. Besides, I'm almost a senior citizen, so I think I did really well.

On the last day, we stopped at this little farm and fed the animals all the veggies and fruit we had left over -- carrots, cabbage, apples. Here's Cheryl feeding the horse.

You'd think we'd never seen livestock before.

That's what I did on my fall vacation.

It's actually the first time I took a whole week off this year. I don't know what I was thinking!