Whimsical Fairy Garden

This afternoon, we decided to make a trip north into the mountains to a destination just past Blairsville.  It's called the Whimsical Fairy Garden, or "Sleepy Hollow Enterprises," which sounds more like a production facility.  Indeed, the popularity of this place has been climbing to such levels that the gentleman who builds the houses inside is having a difficult time keeping up with the demand.  Yes, Mommy and Daddy bought one of his houses - he has it signed on the bottom.

But outside the shop is a small walk where you can see a collection of these creative homes.  There are all sorts of different sizes and styles, although most are not the type of home you can personally fit into.  Instead, they're designed for gnomes, nomes, fairies, or even Nac Mac Feegle.

Here's a gnome looking out over his balcony, looking over the woods he lives in.  He must not get tired of that view...

There's no place like gnome.  Or home.  This place was a bit of a drive for us, past Dahlonega and up and over the mountains towards Blairsville.  That particular drive was so curvy (and as fun as I remember it), that we decided the best thing to do is go home a different way (on Richard Russell Highway), so everyone wouldn't get sick!  But despite one wrong turn, we did find the place rather easily, and for a few moments, we were the only ones there, in fact.  Madison and Mommy went down the path, exploring and looking at all the unique homes.

And here's one that Madison could fit inside.  Actually, just barely.  There were others that she could in fact go inside, but this one was pretty cute.

There were lots of different kind of homes, including the hobbit homes, which seemed to be rather popular.  Madison and Mommy were pointing out a whole community of them across the gulley, all sorts of them scattered up and down the side.

At the entrance of the path there is a nice booklet, made nicer by the scattering of light cascading down upon it.  It welcomes you to a fanciful little journey, and that's just what we took this afternoon.

Here's one home at the entrance to the entire place, very colorfully painted, and as whimsical as the name of this place suggests.  Wouldn't it be great if all of our homes looked somewhat like this.  I wonder what this artist's home actually looks like...

Figurines were all over, mostly gnomes and fairies of course.  But there was the stray animal, a deer, a bird, or even a swinging cat.  Notice those towering homes in the distance?

Here's a better shot of them.  These are creative and colorful - and now we have one in our home.  It is not as tall, but it's a very nice addition to the home.  The idea is that we will be able to make a fairy garden of our own soon enough.  Mommy wants to spend some time with Madison creating something like that - it'll be fun.

As mentioned earlier, you can go inside some of the homes.  This one had a ladder actually underneath, which was somewhat sneaky.  We didn't notice it until we were swinging around to return back up the hill.  Madison ascended inside, and made herself comfortable.  Fortunately, there were no giant birds in there at the time.

This house was Daddy's favorite.  There were many very creative homes here, and despite the long trip, it was a fun destination that we're glad we went to.  The drive itself is always pleasant, as we're heading over the mountains, and seeing the Georgia landscape from a much higher altitude.  Speaking of higher up, we also had to stop here:

This chair was built for really large Amish people.  Actually, we're not sure what it was built for, other than to get you to stop by.  That we did.  Madison stopped and posed in front of the World's Largest Amish Chair , although you couldn't actually sit in the World's Largest Amish Chair, because there was a sign that said specifically, "DO NOT SIT IN THE WORLD'S LARGEST AMISH CHAIR."  But we did take a picture, because that's the thing we tend to do on these trips.

Our other random sighting was on the way:  it was the Indian Princess buried at Intersection.  Evidently she wasn't important enough to actually shift the intersection one way or another.  So there the grave is, in the middle of an intersection.  Travelers leave rocks on her grave in exchange for good luck.  We didn't have any rocks on us, but we saw the big pile of rocks and made a note of it.  Yep, there's an Indian Princess buried under all that.  Getting home, we found out her name was Trahlyta, and she was kidnapped from her Tribe.  This tribe had eternal youth, because they drank from an eternal spring nearby.  But being kidnapped, she couldn't drink from that spring anymore, and started to die.  Her kidnapper buried her back near her home after she died, and people have been placing rocks on her grave ever since, for good luck.  Evidently this is something you do for eternal living kidnapped Indian princesses.  They didn't do it for anyone else, otherwise there'd be piles of rocks everywhere, and then you'd have a lot more than intersections to deal with.  Fortunately for this grave situation, they build the intersection around her, and every day people drive by - maybe tossing rocks out the window?

We got home at a reasonable time, just as we left at one.  It wasn't that far of a journey really, and we're glad we took it.  Fun day!

Continuing our "Verne Fest," we watched the more current "Journey to the Center of the Earth," which we knew Madison would like more.  She in fact did - it was fun watching her tense up at the thrilling moments.  Back across the underground ocean, and up against the Center of the Earth dinosaurs, our heroes made it down and back again, despite overwhelming odds and strange special effects.

And soon, we were off to bed, tired from the full, busy, and yet wonderful - and whimsical - day.