11th Stop - Blue Ridge Mountains (GA)

Blog Post #18 - Written June 9, 2025

Stay: May 25-27, 2025

We, as Westerners and Northerners, were surprised to find how beautifully mountainous and densely wooded the South is. We've loved it and Blue Ridge was no exception!

We stayed at the Waterside at Blue Ridge RV and Tiny Home Community. This was the most expensive campground we'd stayed at thus far, and the fancy rigs we saw here showed it! But we're starting to value and appreciate all of the amenities that come with many of these RV campgrounds. So when you compare the costs of RVing full-time vs normal life, RVing is a bit more expensive for us, but we also didn't have all these amenities at our house either. This campground had a pool, creek, fishing pond, pavilion and fire pit, and a 9-hole disc golf course. 

Parking fiasco: It was here where we realized that a concrete pad site isn't always better than a gravel site. Our concrete pad felt very skinny trying to back in and had 6-in drop-offs on either side, so I feared breaking an axle if I let a wheel fall off haha. The road circling the campground was plenty wide to drive around, but pretty tight for backing in, and the site in front of ours had a big rock I kept almost hitting.  My 37-point turn took about 20 minutes, so we were excited to get the trailer stabilized and slides out once we finally got it backed in.  The only problem was that when we got to the kitchen slide out, it was too close to the water spigot and electrical connection and almost hit it! Ugh. As my co-worker Ace always says, "Why do something once, when you can do it twice! Or even thrice!" 15 minutes to undo the last 20 minutes of work, then another 10 minutes of adjusting the trailer to have enough room for our slideouts without hitting the picnic table on the other side. Finally got it.  But, we did a lot better laughing it off this time, rather than getting too, too frustrated haha. We're learning!

A small portion of the tire marks we left from all of our back and forth with the truck

Even after all that, we still had a few hours to go fishing in the creek and pond, and play a couple rounds of disc golf.

The next day was Memorial Day; we went to Mercier Orchards and had a grand 'ole time picking blueberries. Since we didn't buy a basket for D to fill, we told her her job was to eat as many as possible while we were there, to get our money's worth! The blueberries were delicious and we all ate a bunch, but D out-ate us all haha :)

I didn't realize that blueberries grew on these little bushes. Each little bush produces a crazy amount of berries!

This orchard was up in the mountains and the surrounding hills were simply idyllic. So peaceful.

The rest of the afternoon was spent enjoying the campground pool.

The next day we went out to the Toccoa River Swinging Bridge; the last 3-miles of the path there is some pretty sweet off-roading through the mountains. My favorite part of the short little hike down to the bridge was watching Z and Q hold D's hands and merrily run down the path, singing and tripping and giggling all the way. I hope and believe they will forge the strongest sibling bonds on this trip, and I love watching it!

In case you can't tell, one of our Family Rules is that not everyone is allowed to smile for pictures at the same time. And you're also not allowed to hold still, you must wiggle around the whole time to ensure 95% of the pictures are blurry!

Videos (One, Two, and Three) of the kids giggling down the mountain. I'm sure you don't care to watch all 3, but I couldn't pick between them haha, love these goofballs!

The bridge was fun too (like all of the swinging suspension bridges we've been to). The kids had the most fun playing in the water and little mini-falls. Z even found a dead salamander, which I think was a baby Hellbender. In case you haven't noticed, we love finding wildlife in our travels :)

Video: We might've had too much fun jumping and swaying on the bridge haha

Bonus pics of a patch of amazing wildflowers for my bro Richard, the pics don't do them justice, but I tried :)