Last days in Georgia...

We were very sad to leave Georgia, but right before we left we went to see a few more things. We first went to the Governor’s mansion in Milledgeville. Milledgeville was the old capitol of Georgia. The Governor’s mansion was beautiful, the best feature of the mansion was a large dome in the middle of the mansion. The dome was awe inspiring a big round room opening up into a second story, the dome itself was laid in gold and small windows at the top. The dome was surprising because it was a hidden dome and you would have never known it would be in the mansion judging from the outside. Unfortunately, we could not take any photos, but here is one of the outside.

Our next stop was to see the museum made for the man who wrote the book Uncle Remus. The museum itself was a small slave’s cabin, decorated with old artifacts from that antebellum time. It had some shadow boxes depicting the story of Briar Rabbit. A small museum but very interesting.

The last stop in Georgia was the Ritz Carlton or the Reynolds plantation, not the hotel itself but the grounds around it. The grounds were gorgeous, there were flowering trees, trimmed grass, and a nicely groomed golf course. It is very green and beautiful in Georgia. March is a great time to visit Georgia, because there are beautiful flowers everywhere.

Here are a few pictures of the house we stayed in on the lake, we are sad to leave, but we are excited to move on to South Carolina.

Feeling like Spring

For our third week in Georgia, we wanted to see more of the local culture and area that we are living by. We began our exploration in Milledgeville GA. Milledgeville is the closest town to where we are staying. It was the first capital of Georgia until it was moved later to Atlanta. Our first stop in Milledgeville was Lockerly Hall. This home was a larger plantation that was built in 1839. It is one of the few homes that have been preserved in Milledgeville. Many of the homes were burnt in the civil war. It is said to be haunted, but we didn't run into any ghosts on our visit.

The next stop was the old Capital building. The building looks like a castle and we had hoped to go up into it, but unfortunately it is only open on the trolley tour and the trolley was broken when we went for it. Even though the upper building tour didn't happen, we did get to see a larger museum with civil war information and artifacts.

After we had visited those two places, we headed over to Macon Georgia to see the Cherry Blossom festival and to visit the Hay House. While we were looking around the town in Macon, we came across one of the older churches in the area and took some of these inspiring shots.

The Hay house was very nice looking. It was designed to look like an Italian mansion. To save money they painted many of the walls to look like wood or like marble. It was some of the best facade painting I have seen in a home. I kept thinking that the walls were carved out marble, or the walls detailed wood, but it turned out to be painting most of the time. We weren't able to take pictures inside, but here is what we did get. If you ever go to Georgia, I recommend you visit this house.

After spending our time in Macon, we headed outside of the town to see a local festival, the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was a local gathering much like heritage days in Utah. It is beautiful to see the plants flowering everywhere in Georgia at this time. One of the coolest things we saw was the hot air balloons at the Cherry Blossom Festival. They didn't take off, but instead lit up like giant Christmas lights. That was the end of our day, we experienced a little bit of the local culture, the events, and really enjoyed it.