Our Weekend At Callaway Gardens

I just wanted to take this opportunity to again thank everyone who wished us well for our anniversary. We had a wonderful weekend and I hope you'll indulge me this non-book-related post!

Friday was great. We drove down and got to Pine Mountain at noon, where we had lunch at Aspen's Mountain Grill before heading to check in. After checking in, we decided to head over to the Gardens since the weather was so nice. We started out at the Butterfly Center and were able to get a lot of great pictures of butterflies in the man-made tropical habitat. Our next stop was the Discovery Amphitheater for a Birds of Prey show, which was actually an abbreviated version because it was so hot out--the birds hadn't gotten acclimated to the sudden heat wave, yet. We went on a walk on one of the nature trails after that and visited some Pioneer cabins along the way. After walking around some more, and visiting the Ida Cason Callaway Memorial Chapel (which is really charming, and in a gorgeous setting) we headed back to the hotel to cool off and freshen up before heading to dinner.

Saturday was pretty relaxed, though the rain put a damper on some of our plans. We didn't get to go biking in the morning like we'd planned, but we decided to just go have an early lunch and drive over to Lagrange to see the new Star Trek movie. It was great--I used to watch some of the various Star Trek TV series with my parents, but I don't think I've ever seen one of the movies... I thought this one was really well done. It was still wet and dripping when we left Lagrange, but by the time we got back to Callaway Gardens it was obvious the rain had been out of that area for a little while and things were drying up. So we went ahead and did some more driving around and walking to make sure we visited the spots we hadn't seen on Friday. We walked around Robin Lake beach and also visited Mr. Cason's vegetable garden. We ended the day by heading to the Callaway Gardens Country Store & Kitchen for dinner. They have a southern, homestyle menu that was alright, but nothing to write home about. The reason to eat there is really more for the scenic overlooks...

We woke up to another wet morning on Sunday, so we decided to go ahead and check out and have some breakfast before heading home to spend the rest of the day lounging around and eating the top layer of our wedding cake :-) I'll leave you with a few pictures, and a link to my album on Facebook, which you should be able to view even if you don't have a Facebook account...

J. B. and I inside the Butterfly Center. It was really hot and humid!

There were a lot of beautiful butterflies.

One of my favorite butterfly pics.

One of my favorite pictures from our walk along the nature trail.

Beautiful view over one of many ponds/lakes.

The Ida Cason Callaway Memorial Chapel.

Stealing a smooch in the Victory Garden.

If you'd like to see more pictures from our trip, you can click on this link for our facebook album.