An Early Birthday Present

Normally I am pretty good about buying presents well in advance and saving them for the specific occasion for which they were purchased. For instance, when my boyfriend and I spent a few days in West Virginia last spring, I bought a small Grumpy Cat stuffed animal for Thing 2 (she loves Grumpy Cat), and resisted the urge to give it to her until her birthday just a few weeks ago.

My boyfriend's birthday is a still a few months off, but since we had a trip to his cabin planned, I went ahead and gave him one of his presents early ... a book called Waterfall Hikes of North Georgia. He poured over the pages like a kid who'd found his dad's stash of girlie magazines! We didn't go to any new waterfalls this time, but we did go to some of the places we'd heard about and have always wanted to see, and he took me to some places he'd been to before that he wanted me to share with me (which I thought was pretty sweet, so he got extra points for that!). We have several waterfalls and hikes marked in the book, but there's no rush ... we've got the rest of our lives to see them. Besides, the whole point of the trip wasn't just to see new things, it was also to enjoy the peace and solitude of the mountains together ... and that we did in spades.

When we went to the cabin last autumn, we were trying to hit the mountains during the peak color. We were treated to some pretty spectacular scenery, but it wasn't quite peaking then. We went a little later this year, and hit it just about right. Below are some photo's from the back deck. They were taken with my phone and don't do justice to the bold colors bursting forth across the mountains. One of these days I'll invest in a really good camera. The Blue Ridge Mountains are full of incredible beauty ... just begging to be photographed.

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