The main reason for our USA trip was to find a venue for our wedding. The first half of the trip is probably not that interesting to many of you as we spent this time visiting wedding venues. 

Day 1

We started our USA trip flying from Heathrow to Atlanta in Georgia. It was a long flight and we arrived in Atlanta around 15:30. The car rental is located away from the main terminal, you need to allow plenty of time as we had to wait for around an hour in line to get a bus to the rental garage. Once on the bus it still took around 30 minutes to arrive at the garage. Luckily enough the process with Alamo (booked through car flexi & Top cash back)

We booked a hotel around 10 miles from the airport, the following day we had an early start so needed a hotel close by. 

We booked the Extended Stay America Select Suites located in Morrow, Atlanta. If I can give some advice, DO NOT stay here. The hotel is terrible. It's run down and it smelt pretty awful, stale and smokey. I wouldn't want to stay here again. 

The only good reasons I  can think of to stay at this hotel is the location. It's a good location for easy access to the freeway and also the All in sports bar & lounge is a short walk away. After traveling all day we was hungry and tired so walked over the road to this place where a live band was playing and they served up some great chicken wings with a nice beer.  

Day 2

We started out  in Cedartown visiting Hightower Falls.

We then headed 30 minutes down the road to  Dallas in Paulding county to view Indigo Falls. It turns out the owners of Indigo Falls were scammers called erik martinez and cristina martinez.  These low life scum was taking money off people knowing the weddings would never take place. 

It was 116 miles to our next hotel in Blairsville so we set out on the journey. 

We'd been driving for around an hour when we saw a bigfoot museum. It's located on 1934 Highway in the Blue Ridge mountains. We decided to stop off for a break and have a look around. It was a great unexpected find and we spend longer than we expected browsing around the museum. Expedition BigFoot: The Sasquatch Museum. 

Our hotel was Best Weston Milton Inn and was a 100% improvement on the previous nights hotel in Atlanta. There was no smell, there was a clean room, the area was nice and the staff were friendly and helpful. The breakfast here was also included and did the job to set us up for the day ahead. 

Day 3

We set out early heading to our first venue Enotah Valley. The venue was lovely and we enjoyed our tour.

The location of Enotah Valley is very close to Vogel State Park so we stopped off for a short time and had a look around, we walked around a very picturesque lake and woodland trail. The park featured a small waterfall called Trahlyta Falls. 

From Vogel State Park we headed to Helton Creek Falls. The road down to the falls was more of a narrow dirt track, it's a good job rented a 4x4 pick up truck. The Helton Falls are a very nice falls although it did involve some hiking to get some good views of the falls and surrounding area.

It would have saved us around an hour and plenty of miles if you could have driven down the same road but down the road there is a river crossing with signs up saying you can not go any further because it is private property and no through road.  We turned around and headed back up the track the way we came.

The next venue was around 50 miles away (Lake Rabun Hotel) in Lakemont. We set out and had plenty of time to kill so along the way we decided to stop off along the way and found Chattahoochee Source Trail it was called Brasstown Bald. We followed the road to the top of the mountain and once we arrived at the top it was extremely quiet with hardly any visitors. Hardly surprising though as the weather was poor and visibility was pretty bad. A low cloud meant we couldn't see very far so we continued onto our hotel. 

Once we arrived at Lake Rabun Hotel we quickly got settled into our room before meeting up with our host and being shown the wedding venue around 10 minutes from the hotel location.

Later in the evening we decided to venture out and find a local bar and restaurant for food. 

The restaurant at Lake Rabun Hotel only opens on certain nights of the week during the off season so we were unlucky and had to find an alternative venue. 

No worries though, 15 minutes up the road in a placed called Clayton we found Coach's Sports Bar and Grille. We wasn't sure about this place to start with, we bypassed the restaurant and headed straight for the bar where we started with some drinks before we got chatting to some locals at the bar and the bar staff. We ordered some food at the bar and had a great night and met some really nice people. 

100% recommend Coach's Bar & Grille. 

Day 4

Another early start as we headed off to Toccoa Falls to see our next venue. Even though we'd arranged for several months before to visit the venue and be given a tour there was nobody available to do this so we were just told to go and explore the venue ourselves. It didn't take long though, a short walk away and there is a great waterfall, Toccoa Falls. As a wedding venue though?

We didn't stay long and headed straight out to our next venue which was 200 miles away in North Carolina. We drove for around before Stopping in Greenville. We spent around 2 hours exploring Falls Park which included Reedy River Falls, Liberty Bridge, Camperdown Mill, Carolina Foothills Garden Club Sanctuary and Vardy Creek. This areas was an unexpected stop but we're glad we did, there was quite a lot to see as we walked through the park. 

We drove for almost 2 hours into North Carolina before we stopped at Crowders Mountain State Park. 

Once at the top of Crowders Mountain State Park we parked up and headed into the visitor center. We were given some advice on different trails we could take varying form 1 mile to 6.2 miles hiking trails. We headed out up the park.  The park was showing signs of fire damage from what looked like a pretty big fire recently. Nature is amazing and walking through the these state parks and enjoying the views from the top is a great way to spend a couple of hours. 

Once we finished our hike we continued our trip as we still had over 100 miles to drive to Winston-Salem, NC to our next hotel. 

Day 5