After enjoying 10 of Georgia’s wonderful state parks since early May when our governor started loosing up our restrictions, we’re now getting itchy to go to new places, explore more, and see vistas. Our trip home from the last state park started moving us toward this direction because we decided to stop at 2 Harvest Host overnight locations. Our first stop was at a working farm.
Three Rivers Farm & Retreat Center (and sourdough micro-bakery) is just 1/4 of a mile inside the state line of southeast Tennessee.
What is Harvest Host? It’s a membership program for RVers that connects us with more than 1145 businesses that have large, flat parking lots like wineries, breweries, museums, and farms for a 1 night stay without hookups.
Justin & Jemma Byrne came here 2 years ago to stake out a life of growing their own food, raising their children, and introducing others to this way of living. We bought some of their sourdough tortillas (and ordered a sourdough loaf of bread to be mailed to our home), and it was so good.
As we pulled off the highway to a back country road and then to this intersection, we crossed the state line from Georgia to Tennessee. This is the first time we’ve crossed a state line without any indication of where we are!
We’re leaving the farm in this picture and are still in Tennessee. When we turn right at the stop sign, we’ll be back in Georgia. Just wanted to show you where the state line was.
When we turned onto a gravel road to get to the farm, we began wondering if we were lost! We saw the address on the mailbox and knew that this was supposed to be our destination, but when Barney saw the couple’s logo on the mailbox, we started relaxing.
We’re pulling out in this picture, but when we pulled in the day before, we were a really nervous that maybe we were in the wrong place and wouldn’t be able to turn around.
But we got here, got settled by the barn, hooked up with their electricity (so good to have in this hot weather), and started seeing what this farm was all about.
The owners, Justin and Jemma, describe Three Rivers Farm on their website as “a 225 acre working farm named for the three rivers, Conasauga, Ocoee, & Hiwasee, that run through the beautiful River Valley of Southeast Tennesee. The farm backs up to the Cherokee National Forest & is full of rolling hills, evergreen trees, & breathtaking scenery.”
Justin and Jemma are renting 6 acres of land for their farm, and the rest of the land is leased out to others who use it for their beef cattle.
This barn is for the cattle. All afternoon and evening, we heard the cows talk to each other. Aren’t these clouds beautiful?
This commercial kitchen was the selling point for Justin and Jemma to rent this farm since they’ve been making sourdough bread as an alternative to gluten bread since 2015.
The couple also sells pork products from their own hogs and farm fresh eggs. If you’re interested in this farm, their website is www.threeriversfarmandretreat.com.
their farm house
sheep grazing in their backyard
back on the road
On our way to our next Harvest Host site in northern Georgia, we drove along a beautiful highway in Tennessee along the Ocoee River. Since we’re now in Tennessee, we saw new advertising as we started out.
Rock City, for those who don’t know about it, is a “marvel” of nature on top of Lookout Mountain outside of Chattanooga. Here’s the description from Rock City’s website: “featuring massive ancient rock formations, gardens with over 400 native plant species, and breathtaking “See 7 States” panoramic views.”
And then here’s the 1st Tennessee lotto location, 1st Tennessee gas station (closed down), and 1st Tennessee beer in southeast corner of the state. Good to know.
white water rafting
As we turned east onto U.S. 74, we started driving along the Ocoee River. We’ve been on this highway before and remembered its beauty. When we were in this area about 15 years ago, we stopped at the white water kayak area used during the 1996 Olympics. It’s closed down now, but where we stopped to look at the rapids is about 1 mile west of that location.
We stopped at the Rogers Branch of the Ocoee River where we saw school buses pulling in.
We walked down to this staging area filled with rafts and groups of those wanting to ride the rapids. See the rocky mountain side that keeps going up and up?
As we joined the groups in the parking lot, all we could see was this calm water that ended just beyond the bridge. A tour guide came up to us to see if he could answer any questions. My first question was, “Do you go over the dam at this spot?” He shook his head and said it’s a $10,000 fee for being on the dam. Now we’re really curious about this spot.
School bus after school bus came into the parking lot emptying out groups of young (and young-at-heart) people. The rafting companies seemed to be on a schedule so they didn’t offload people on top of other companies’ clients.
Before getting to the water, each group’s tour guides instruct the riders on what to expect and how to handle themselves. Our son Jason, and his 3 kids, have taken a raft down the river and said it was a blast.
rafts waiting for riders
Then a raft’s riders start walking down the ramp next to the dam.
Oh boy, that’s a lot of water!
As the group walks down the ramp, you can see how far the water falls over the dam.
starting out on the river
Group after group ride the rapids.
As we were walking back to our truck and RV, we saw this sign. Oh boy, history!
Here’s the whole sign so you’ll know where each following picture is from.
According to Wikipedia, “The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter on May 18, 1933, to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression.”
I remember hearing about the work of the TVA during the Depression; now we get to learn more about it.
So many creeks and small rivers flow into the Tennessee River.
Here are the headwaters of river from the mountains in surrounding states. For comparison sake, the amount of water discharged into the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Tennessee River is equal in size to the Missouri River (which we still want to explore!).
The river dips into Alabama before flowing toward the middle of the country.
Back into Tennessee, the river meets with the Ohio River to eventually flow into the Mississippi River in Kentucky.
Here we are right now. The No. 2 powerhouse is just behind us.
This powerhouse is downstream from the dam. Its stored water is released to generate electricity. The same water produces electricity at additional dams further down the river.
And here is the powerhouse at the end of the bridge (of course it’s closed off).
Dams on the tributaries create large storage reservoirs to hold back flood waters, releasing them when necessary to maintain navigation depths downstream, as well as generate electric power.
The 9 main river dams, along with their locks, form a navigation channel that’s 650 miles long from Knoxville to the Ohio River. This important arm of the nation’s inland waterway system connects 20 states!
The TVA has also built huge coal-burning steam electric plants to help serve the region’s growing power needs. This power is sold wholesale to cities and rural electric cooperatives that in turn distribute the power at retail prices to homes, farms, businesses, and industry. A few industries and U.S. government defense installations use large amounts of power directly from the TVA. The largest users are the atomic plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Paducah, Kentucky.
2 towns sharing a state line
After driving for a while, we were ready to drive back into Georgia. We’ve been to this next area 2 different times with 2 of our Georgia grandchildren as we took a 4-hour round trip train ride here from Blue Ridge, Georgia, 26 miles away. The first hour took us to quaint sister towns of McCaysville, Georgia, and Copperhill, Tennessee, nestled deep in the mountains on each side of the state line.
downtown Copperhill, Tennessee
Then arriving on the train, we had a 2-hour layover in these sister towns for lunch and pictures along this blue line that separates the towns.
This mom and daughter are in Georgia, while we’re in Tennessee stopped at a traffic light before turning right to come back into Georgia.
In case you’re interested, I have pictures of 2 of the Georgia grans with this blue line and 1 picture of the third at a local zoo (I know we took him on the train ride but can’t find pictures; maybe we didn’t).
Chris in 2005
Mackenzie in 2011
Zach at the Atlanta Zoo in 2011
Harvest Host in Blue Ridge
Our 2nd Harvest Host stop was at Mercier Orchards in Blue Ridge, Ga., the northwest part of the state in the Chattahoochee National Forest.
Here’s the huge gravel parking lot where we stayed that’s just beyond the paved lot that’s downhill from the store. We’re about 1/3 of a mile from the store, so it’s a good hike to get there. Later on another RVer joined us in the parking lot.
The view in front of our RV. Ah-h-h.
This holding pond was to the left of our pond.
The farm started growing produce in 1943.
Side of the store. It kept on getting bigger and bigger inside as we walked around.
local fresh produce, peaches felt awfully hard though
more to buy
and even more
The restaurant closed down for dine-in eating just today, so we got to-go orders and went back to our RV for lunch. The sandwiches were really good. We were glad to have our generator to cool off our RV and watch a show or two before going to sleep (generator off by 10:00).
So we think we’re done for Georgia state parks for now. After a month home with doctor appointments and getting rid of our mosquito and ant bites, we hope to get on the road again traveling toward Mount Rushmore and points west.
