JULY 18, 2015

We drove to Brasstown Valley in Young Harris, GA for surprise day-trip for Linda and her sister, Tina.  A 'surprise' day-trip is were we start out and I do not tell Linda where we are going.

We ate lunch at the Brasstown Valley Resort, which I highly recommend.  All had the Salad Bar, which included a great Stuffed Potato Soup and a chef preparing a hot pasta dish as you choose what you want in it.  My sauce had shrimp, chicken, roasted tomatoes, roasted red peppers, mushrooms, bacon, kalamata olives, pesto, and Alfredo sauce.  There were four pastas from which to choose, but... I opted out of the pasta and ate my sauce creation, which was great!

The first picture is of the view from the veranda, where we sat to eat.

The next picture is the view leaving the resort, as we headed for the next secret destination ...

which was Brasstown Bald

The next three pictures are looking East from Brasstown Bald, the highest point in Georgia, which has an elevation 4784 feet.  As one looks our over the mountains, one sees why they are called the Smokies or Blue Ridge Mountain.

TRIVIA FROM THE INTERNET:  What causes the 'blue' in Blue mountains?

“The haze which appears to surround any distant object is due to an optical phenomenon called ‘Rayleigh scattering’. This effect, first investigated theoretically by Lord Rayleigh, causes the rays of light which impinge on small particles to be scattered in various directions… Since the atmosphere is always laden with small dust particles, water droplets and the like and since even the air molecules themselves contributed to some extent to the scattering… if an observer look sat a distant object with the intervening atmosphere illuminated by sunlight, eyes will receive the blue scattered rays of sunlight to reflect the object itself. Therefore any distant object will always appear to display”