Helen

"Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty." - Coco Chanel

Christmas morning 2018 started like any Christmas morning in the Spears household. We wake up at the crack of dawn to open our gifts because we cannot wait any longer to see what Santa brought ;) Mom passed out our gifts while we all sat on the couch “patiently” waiting for the go to open them. My very last gift to open was a bag with nothing other than a piece of paper and a brochure in it. The piece of paper was a note telling me that we were leaving to go on our first (which means there will be more!) Nanny inspired trip to Helen, Georgia. Now if you know anything about me or my family, you know how close my mom and I were to my grandmother. One of the things she left behind when she passed away last Christmas was a “travel box” with TONS of maps and brochures of places she had traveled to. The brochure had come from her travel box and it was for the hotel we were going to stay in. The Castle Inn was right next to the river and and in the middle of Downtown Helen. Helen was an 8 hour drive from my parents house so now it made sense why Mom woke us up at 7am rather than letting us sleep until 8! We had to leave so we could get there at a decent time. Now keep in mind, we were traveling on Christmas Day, which made for an easy drive since there was minimal traffic- But NOTHING was open. We started looking for a Starbucks once we got through Jackson and couldn’t find one open until Birmingham but at least there was one open. Once we got to Helen, we checked in to our hotel and freshened up to head out to find dinner. Again, it’s Christmas Day…… but there was ONE place open and they were soooo busy. We both found it surprising that there weren’t more places open considering it was such a tourist town. We were both worn out from the drive so after we ate we went back to the room and found a Christmas movie to watch.

On Wednesday morning we stumbled upon the cutest little bakery and cafe called Hofer’s of Helen. Now Helen is a German inspired town so it was very cultured and all of the servers at Hofer’s definitely dressed the part! That Wednesday was supposed to be our best day as far as weather so most of the things we did that day were outside. Helen sits at the foothills of the Chattahoochee National Forest so we started the day with a hike at Anna Ruby Falls. It was only about a .5 mile hike and the entire way was paved so it made for a pretty easy hike.

After the hike, I was in need of a coffee! We drove through the town, which isn’t very big at all, but found this small cute coffee shop called the Jumpin’ Goat. They didn’t have a large coffee selection BUT IT SMELLED SO GOOD INSIDE! Next door to the coffee shop was an old Granary Mill that they had turned into an antique/every little random thing you can think of kind of store. Like mom bought a boiled egg cutter there which I haven’t seen anywhere other than Amazon. I had never seen what a Granary Mill looked like and the process that it took was still set up for the most part.

After the hike, coffee, and a small bit of shopping- I was personally ready for a drink. I actually didn’t realize that there were so many wineries in that area. We found one in a neighboring town called Cleveland. It was Yonah Mountain Vineyard, and it got its name honestly! The vineyard sat at the foot of Yonah Mountain. Now, I had been to wineries before, so I knew what I was looking for (like the abv, and knew not to go for the highest one first-which is exactly what my mom did.) I was able to enjoy a couple of different wines, while Mom only got to have the first one she ordered. However, I will say that one was easily our favorite, despite the ABV being the highest. I tried to find the name of the wine on their website for a recommendation but I can’t find it anywhere- all I can remember is that it was a dessert sweet red wine. They had a nice patio area outside and we sat outside, the weather was beautiful that day and it wasn’t really cold.

After we left there, we went back into Downtown Helen and found a miniature golf course. We were thinking it was going to rain most of the trip but our first day was beautiful and we wanted to take advantage of the sunshine! After playing 18 holes, Mom beat me 51 to 57. I was sure when I suggested mini golf, it was going to be an easy win for me but noooope! It was ok though because I had just won at the winery ;)

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast so we took someone’s recommendation and tried the steakhouse that was right behind our hotel, Cowboys & Angels Restaurant & Bar. Even though we had gotten there pretty early for dinner, we still had to wait a bit so that must be a good sign right? We both ordered steaks and I don’t remember either of us complaining! Whenever we were leaving, there were a 2 guys who were starting to play guitar on the patio so at night they have live music, a win in my book. There were a ton of little souvenir shops all throughout Downtown Helen so that’s what we spent our evening doing. Besides the souvenir shops, there were glassblowing stores, a couple of clothing boutiques and considering it was right after Christmas, everywhere had a lot of really good sales going on! One thing they had which was a first for me (at the time), was an olive oil and balsamic tasting room. Now I’m not big on either of those, but I had no clue those types of tasting rooms existed! Considering we were adjusting to the eastern time zone, we had gotten up early that morning so we were also ready to call it an early night! We finished off the night with a Chocolate Martini at the restaurant under our hotel, The Troll Tavern, and went back up to watch a Christmas movie.

Like I said earlier, we were expecting rain on the rest of our trip in Helen. But we woke up early on Thursday and went for another hike at Duke’s Creek Falls. This day was much colder because it was a bit more up into the mountains and since it was supposed to rain that afternoon it was extremely overcast and windy. Now since I live in L.A., I hike much more often than Mom does so considering this one was about a mile each way, it took us much longer and we’d stop to “take in the scenery” a little more often than we did at Anna Ruby Falls.

We saved the “inside” activities for this day so after the hike we went to the Nacoochee Village Antique Mall. This was a 3 story home that they had filled every room with all kinds of different antiques, but any kind of antique you can imagine! From old Coca-Cola bottles, to different types of China, old records, CDs, VHS tapes, furniture and just other random things. Literally anything you can imagine, they had. The house that the mall was in had a unique history to it and also had a cat that lived there with the original family and stuck around after they made it into the antique mall until 2015. By the time we covered all 3 floors and every room, the rain was starting to fall. But lucky for us, in the same parking lot, there was another winery so we made our way over there. This one was called Habersham Vineyards & Winery. It was smaller than Yonah but here we did a tasting of 5 different wines. Our favorite here was the Chambourcin, which we ended up buying a bottle of! It was also a dessert wine, and we were served chocolate chips to pair with it! Can’t you tell we’ve got a sweet tooth :P

Another popular thing to do in Helen is to check out Charlemagne’s Kingdom. Basically it’s this Alpine Train Model Museum and it is REALLY COOL Y’ALL! It’s this massive room with a train model set up and when you go enter, they give you a scavenger hunt of about 10 different things to find to help you really look at every aspect. There were 2 floors to view it from so you could have an aerial view or at eye level. To find all 10 things, we had to use both floors, and I promise it wasn’t as easy as one would think, but we found them all (and got them right!) so it’s not impossible. Across the street from there was a small store called Betty’s Country Store, which was kind of like a Cracker Barrel and a grocery store and a tavern all put into one “country store”. Since it was happy hour at this time, of course we had to have a Sangria. After we left here it was still raining so we stopped by a few more boutique stores, I convinced my mom to buy me a new outfit (score!), walked around town one last time, and had dinner at The Troll Tavern. The Chocolate Martini’s were good enough to bring us back for dinner the next night!

At this point, we knew the weather was about to get pretty rough so we’d leave Friday morning and go stay with some of our family in Atlanta. Now we knew there was a lot of rain coming, but we didn’t realize how much. It was a good decision on our part to leave a night early because the river going through Helen rose extremely high and all of the stores and restaurants were closing and putting sandbags everywhere to keep the water from coming in. It was legit FLOODING. But we got out early enough and went to one last winery on our way out. This one was called CeNita Vineyards & Winery and we arrived right as they were opening so we were the only ones there. We had a glass of their Strawberry Wine (que Deana Carter) and also brought a bottle of that home as well. Since we were the only ones there, we got to try a couple of different fruit wines and they gave us some bread and olive oil to snack on while we were there. Once we left there, we got in to Atlanta and went and got mani pedis and then headed to my cousins house to meet up with them. We caught up with them, went to dinner at a local mexican restaurant and went to see Holmes & Watson. Honestly, the movie wasn’t my favorite BUT we definitely made the most out of it! That next morning we headed out pretty early and props to my mom for doing most of the driving! That was probably only because my driving makes her nervous, but hey I don’t mind being the Starbucks finder! It was such a good weekend with my Mom and the fact that it was a surprise on Christmas made it that much better. My parents have been known to wake us up Christmas morning and already have packed our bags for us and we hit the road, but this was the first time for just the 2 of us! Already looking forward to the next one and can’t wait to see where our best friend’s travel box leads us to next!

xoxo

charli