If someone tells you that they've got a big rock in Georgia that's about a quarter of a mile high and more or less five miles around ...

... you better believe 'em.

Cause I've seen it and, though I didn't walk around it, counting the steps ... I did drive around it ... and am willing to give them the benefit of any residual doubt that there may be.

It's over 1500 feet above sea level at the top, they say, and on the last visit I rode up on a cable car (too lazy to walk?) and I figure that it's likely to be about that high. Storm imminent, this time, so car shut down ... also, they have a laser light show and it was, too.

They have a large carving of some southern dignitaries of another era on the side of it, as well ... covering an area about the size of a city block, they say.

But ... if they tell you that they're working on a sling shot that'll throw that rock a long way ... even over into another state ... I'd be careful, if I were you.

And, though we didn't visit it this time, they have a large assemblage of vintage cars in one place, including a Tucker, an innovative auto that a visionary developed, just after World War II that had several features that were way ahead of their time, such as headlights that turned when one turned the steering wheel. I forget what some of the others were ... but I remember well enough that the big automakers blocked his effort at every turn and he was never able to build more than about 50 of 'em.

And that's no tall story: that's a fact.

I think that there's some false advertising in the subject line of this thread, as much of the story thus far is unspectacularly true ... but there were so many interesting things about the visit (and the former one) that I just had to tell all of you about 'em.

Yesterday, though, they took us to visit Dahlonega, a town where they found gold and had a gold rush in the early 1800s. When the gold price went up about 1900, they were building a big mine ... but the gold price went down, the mine went broke ... and now they've made it a heritage site. Mining the tourist trade, I think.

We could pan for gold ... and most everyone got a little (yes, you can see the specks) ... and they can hammer it so thin that it's only 1/100,000th of an inch thick (and even thinner) and they use it to coat the visors of the astrnauts to protect their eyes from UV rays ... welding helmets, too. And the connecting parts in computers.

And those are all facts ...

... but when the tour guide started down the mine shaft, he suggested that we stay close by him ... and that it might have been a good idea to have brought some provisions ...

... as some time ago, some tourists got lost ...

... and showed up six days later, with eyes blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight ...

... up near Chattanooga.

My knowledge of Southern geography is somewhat sketchy, but I have a feeling that Chattanooga is somewhat of a distance from here.

When I asked whether it'd be a good idea to have brought some sleeping bags ... he allowed as how that might not have been a bad idea!

Those tourists - they ask the strangest questions, you know!

ole joyful