Bolding Mill Campground in Gainesville, Georgia September 8 – 15, 2025

We left Grove Campground in The Bluegrass State around 9 am on Monday, September 8th for a 250-mile drive to Bolding Mill Campground in Gainesville, Georgia. We drove through part of Tennessee on our trip to where we’ll be spending 7-nights at another campground on Lake “Dead Bodies” Lanier in The Peach State.

We arrived around 3:30 pm and while pulling through the campground gate we saw three deer bounding across the road, so Cindy loved this place already, lol!

Bolding Mill Campground

Bolding Mill Campground is a large facility with 88 sites that have water and electric for RV’s or tents, as well as 9 sites that are primitive (no water or power) for tents only, for a total of 97 sites. There are restroom/shower facilities scattered around the various loops and the one closest to us had a washer/dryer for doing laundry.

Our site was a back-in with a level concrete pad, water and 50-amp electric. Not as much privacy between sites as we like, but not as bad as some we have stayed at. Our “backyard” led down to the shore of Lake Lanier, but it was a steep trek down and back up to our site.

After getting set up we had dinner and then took Bella for a walk around 6:30 pm (which was twilight and a prime time to see deer at most places that have them) and saw 7 or 8 deer in a field that was about three sites away from ours. Cindy was SO excited!

And it was “Star Trek Day”, which I wrote about on my personal blog.

Deer Herd and Shopping

Tuesday morning after breakfast we took Bella on a walk and saw about 16 deer in a herd with a couple of very young ones. Cindy has decided that, if we return to this campground, she will get us the campsite closest to where they gather in the early morning and at dusk so she can see them right outside our door.

You may think you see a lot of photos of deer in our album, but just know I had to cull through a couple of hundred that she took to get the ones you see there. Yes, she loves seeing deer.

After our hike we drove into nearby Gainesville, Georgia to get groceries and pick up prescriptions. Later in the day we hiked a trail in the campground and saw some interesting things which YOU can see in the photo album for this post.

Alpine Village of Helen, Georgia

After a good breakfast Wednesday morning we drove about 35 miles northeast of the campground to Helen, Georgia. Helen is an Alpine Village where the atmosphere and architecture, even buildings for brand names like Wendy’s or Huddle House restaurants, are done in the Bavarian style. Apart from modern vehicles driving down the main road, you would think you were walking through a village in the Alps instead of a rural portion of a southern state like Georgia.

When we first arrived we stopped at the Visitors Center to pick up maps and get suggestions from the staff. Then we took a side street and drove to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Food and service weren’t that good, but the company was great…at least for me, lol! We left Voyager parked in a free spot and proceeded to walk over to the Main Street so we could stroll through the town.

It IS very much a touristy spot, but there are also a lot of small village aspects to enjoy. We picked up some souvenirs and enjoyed casually making our way through various stores and merchants’ shops. We had fun taking some amusing photos of us in oversized chairs and me with Bigfoot.

Anna Ruby Falls

While in the Visitors Center one of the nice ladies asked us if we liked waterfalls. Do we like waterfalls?? Hell Yeah!! So she told us about Anna Ruby Falls and that it was only 5 miles northeast of Helen. After we walked back to Voyager we drove off to visit the falls, which were located in the Chattahoochee National Forest.

Our “America The Beautiful” pass got us in for free (love how much that pass has saved us over the past 4 years) and we parked at the Visitors Center/Gift Shop. The trailhead is behind the Center and it’s only .4 miles to hike up to Anna Ruby Falls, but it’s a steep hike. That, along with the fact that we had been walking all around Helen and the fact that my left knee was killing me made the hike a challenge.

But, as I told Cindy, I have found that over the years, when I’m remembering this a few years from now, I won’t remember the knee pain. I’ll remember that I persevered and got to enjoy the beauty of something (in this case the waterfalls) and the fun of doing it with her.

So, I hobbled up the trail to the waterfalls and, as I thought, the sight of the majesty of the falls made the effort worth it. Anna Ruby Falls is a rare double-waterfall and they plunge 150 feet to the creek bed below. You could easily stand and watch the water cascading down with the roar of it filling your ears for hours and hours.

Reinvigorated, we hiked back down to the trailhead and bought more souvenirs and an ice cream cone at the gift shop.

But we still weren’t done with our day!

Babyland General Hospital

No, we’re NOT expecting a new little Wandering Wetherington.

Babyland, in Cleveland, Georgia, is the home of that 1980’s era doll craze; Cabbage Patch Kids. If you’re old enough, you may remember that people were fighting each other to get the dolls for their kids, because they were in such high demand that there was a shortage of them that Christmas in 1982.

The landscaping around the building includes giant “cabbage patches” with their distinctive plastic-headed dolls popping out of the cabbage leaves. The building itself is modeled as a hospital with a nursery where the babies are born and even the staff are dressed in nurses’ scrubs.

The place was HUGE with dolls ranging from babies to kids and all the clothes and accessories each would ever need. There were parents there with their little ones and we got to see a little girl get her first adopted Cabbage Patch Baby. Cindy was showing and telling me which Cabbage Patch Kids Amber got when she was a little girl (which was a few years after the initial craze). Even for someone like me, who didn’t pay much attention to the 1982 craze, there was a profound feeling of nostalgia as we walked around from room to room seeing all the various Cabbage Patch Kids.

I also felt bad that I never bought my own daughter, who was 7 at the time they came out, a Cabbage Patch Kid. I remember that finances were tight at the time, but I also remember that I’ve never been one to partake in many fads or crazes that were marketed with the goal of making you feel guilty.

Of course, now I feel guilty that I didn’t.

But it was a fun place to visit and if you get the chance you should.

We, obviously, rested Thursday. I spent most of the day with my leg elevated and my knee iced.

Then Friday after a hike with Bella we drove back into Gainesville to get haircuts, visit Books-A-Million, and stopped by Home Depot to get the things we needed to fix the leg of our desk and repair some floor covering in our bathroom.

Saturday we hiked with Bella and did laundry. Sunday we hiked with Bella and then spent the day resting and getting ready to leave the next day for our next stop.

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