Macon cherry blossom festival - March23,24 2013

    Cherry blossom festival at DC had found a place in our to-do list as it figured in multiple independent discussions on places to visit while in the US. As we have planned for a trip to India and as the blossom this year is scheduled late this year in DC as per my friend Rana, a quick search for alternative cherry blossom at Macon indicated that the cherry blossom festival was scheduled to end March 24th.

 Thinking that rooms may not be available and to bind the possibility of a visit further, I quickly called up and booked a room. Thunderstorm warnings did not deter us from going ahead as planned.Flimsy planning and last minute phone calls saw us start late on Saturday around noon.It is just one and a half hour drive and Macon is indeed a beautiful city with a very relaxed atmosphere, the kind ideal for settling down quitely.
 





 While cherry blossom was the main motivation for the visit, we were enjoying the landscape beauty as well as the old architecture of the buildings and the general laid-backness felt probably due to the absence of high rises. The phone call research had advised us of the path to take to get the maximum natural beauty of the cherry blossom trees but at the same time we had also learned that the blossom is at about 10 percent bloom only. It was too late to back up now though.

We did follow the trail and we could indeed see the potential of beauty there and traces left of the beauty to come. Divya was more interested in participating in the festivities that the cherry blossom festival represented. Having obediently followed the documented instructions of cherry blossom with just hope to credit, we sought our next plan of action.
        Foodies as we are, our first destination was 'New China Buffet' where I had oyster for the first time consciously, consciously to imply that I looked at the food item flag before picking it up. Sushi items / Hibachi / Teriyaki etc took turns filling up time and stomach.We reached our lodge, parked our bag and set off to the only destination where festival activity was still in progress as it was already past 4 PM. So we reached the central state park.

The parking was in a mud ground and we really liked the rustic ambience , the kind we would see in India with brown water clogged road, without the organized perfections that US typically represents with regards to infrastructure.


       It was a typical 'ulsavam'(festival) like atmosphere with merry go rounds/ food stalls/ pranky stalls/ turkey legs/ white tiger feed show/ giant wheel/ slides/cyclops/ stage music/ goodies stalls etc. Croaking frog was a nice wooden toy with rails on the frog's back,  on sliding across the rails with a stick, the frog croaked and there were so many frogs with shopping kids that it almost started to rain. By now, I had come to terms with the truth that I had made a bad decision jumping ahead with the plan without verifying the cherry blossom percentage.It is not fair to hold a cherry blossom festival without the actual blossom being there - sooner or later, it will hit back as the business was designed around the blossom in the first place.

        And so, Divya benefited from not having to search for blossomed trees anymore.The rides were all for Divya to take as I took care of our meek wimpy daughter Niya who shies away from rides of any kind. Another advantage of Macon is that it is not a typical tourist place, the typical place is DC remember, and so we felt free-er. Divya took the rides in full abandon - the cyclops which twisted her around while heads-down and more of the ever-common rides.
       We closed the park and drove back home.I wanted to foodie a little more and light as we had a heavy lunch. So we chose a japanese Ninja restaurant where I had Mahimahi ( a fish less fish smelly than Salmon) and steak which was pretty good and Divya had california roll. It was a pretty good day when I look at it now though the general feeling about the trip was one of disappointment as macon supposedly has 300K cherry blossom trees - that was the anticipation and we would have seen roughly 100 bloomed trees.
            The next day was a Sunday and work was supposed to start early to make up for the late start the previous day. We started at 11 , the first stop was the mulberry street to see the arts and crafts festival which had shifted due to rains. Still hoping to see more blossom, I took the party to the botanical garden. You can stand in front of a building in a busy street, looking in a different direction and miss a building directly in front of you and get mildly embarassed when someone else helps you find building 1089 while you had your eyes on 1082.

The botanical garden took this to an extreme, we were inside the botanical garden, were disappointed that the GPS was not working fine, went out to a gas station, took by-mouth directions and reached back to the same botanical garden.We drove around slowly and luckily saw a board that said ' Waddel Barnes' botanical garden. What had seemed so far to be the parking lot of the college was actually the botanical garden! and this had figured in the list to visit from the phone call! Matter was closed atleast - it was the garden's mistake, not ours.
        Finally we went to the same park as the previous day. Further anti-climax awaited us as we saw the stalls packing up , the rides closing down but the kind of lazy attitude we had for the trip by this time, we were not particularly disappointed. It was much much better than a typical weekend anyway, even while my friends were playing soccer in Atlanta while I watched closing stalls.

As luck would have it, the turkey leg stall was open and one leg served as lunch for all three of us and it was very tasty.


        I had missed out on an important detail about Saturday's visit - the section of the park where white cop cars parked lined by a fair set of blossomed trees.This was the best section of the trip in space for me.We had lied down under the beautiful trees , just bathing in the beauty, taking some photos as well.That is where the sunday ended as well in Macon and that was good enough for us. Photography by Niya and a lot of open space for Niya and Divya to run around and a whole lot of time as we had no useful options left. It was memorable to spend some relaxed family time in such beautiful surroundings.
       Arun(Manhattan friend) had invited us over for dinner back in Atlanta. That was our next stop where we met the one and only Siju Joseph(again from Manhattan) and had the pleasure of a kerala style dinner with Sambar and spicy chicken curry.Well the 300K blossomed up cherry trees was left unfulfilled and that disappointment is a truth - the only solace is I just may make another trip in one of the coming weekends to actually count the remaining 299K,900 bloomed trees.


      

Snow modesty

    I have seen snow once from New York ten years back but Divya and Niya had never seen snow yet. Hence, watching snow while living in the US was on our mind. Intention was just to see snow atleast once. So when the freeze warning led to further research at weather.com, we saw an opportunity at BrassTown Bald, about two hours from here.
    There was an earlier snow prediction in Dahlonega, a month or so back, we had drove there and came back snowless. This trip was also done against such anticipation. But we did see some positive signs before the trip.
    The leather jacket we had bought from India for Divya had torn and so we bought another one and as we parked our car back at home, the lamp post was showering slight dandruff-like flurries. Unaware of driving risks in case of snow, I decided to get the pending can't repair tyre replaced. This time, Nissan pulled out an L-shaper from the tyre and said that no replacement was needed.That was a 170$ saving.

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We timed our trip around 9 AM this saturday as the predicted snow time was 12 PM. We bought doughnuts for breakfast and one hour into the drive, we started seeing snow in the trees on both sides of the road. Divya was the one who pointed out the white-flower like snow interspersed in the green pine trees.



Doubts melted quickly as snow started presenting itself more and more in the grass, on the trees, on roofs , on cars. Steering felt like hand-cuffs as I could not take my hands off it to use my camera.My mind wandered through the snow sights where as I was forced to follow the road.
     






Essentially, the sights were patterns that snow made emphasizing the structure of what snow has fallen on - remember some interesting patterns on tree branches. At a point, the sights started getting boring. After all, it is just whiteness. The whiteness was not rich enough either.  Road curves sprang up snow covered hills once in a while and these looked beautiful enough to inspire photography at red lights.
      Meanwhile it snowed as well and we saw live snow coming in to our windshields - not a whole lot, just enough to have us claim that we have seen live snow but not enough for us to say 'Wow!'We were tempted to off-road and take in the immediate sights around but we kept on and finally reached BrassTown visitors center.
       Here, snow was thickest of what we had seen so far.As Divya helped Niya into multiple jackets, I  did some documentation photography. Now, we were pretty clear that the trip had paid off. Niya and Divya started playing with the snow on the grass.





We felt elated at this point and captured some of our happiness in photographs. The road to the top of the mountain was closed off.
   











As per weather predictions, the chance for snow was maximum at a different pin code, the brasstown valley. So we drove there and true to prediction, we experienced more live snow but there was no snow cover around. We however got lucky to get an excellent view of a thickly snow covered hill, though at a distance.
     





We reached back to the BrassTown visitors center and decided to spend the rest of the time there. More people had played in the snow by then. There was less snow left. Enthusiastic american families were playing around in the snow. The way they made huge snowballs was interesting,  grab some snow in your palms and form a ball the  size of shot-put, then roll the ball around, the snows stick together and you get a huge snow ball, the size of a foot ball, that forms the tummy and then another balls forms the trunk and another one the head, sticks become hands.
   






Niya was trying to join the party but had a hard time balancing herself in the slippery snow. She wanted to play with friends and make her own snowman. Meanwhile, the cold was biting my gloveless hands and I retired into the car heater.

Divya and Niya continued playing for some more time and Divya devised our own sweet little snow man.


       A little more enthusiasm would have helped but I had let the weather push me back into the car and soon back on the drive back. We would allow ourselves some time to take different sights on the road back. We started off with Vogel state park which was just another state park and we drove on. Well, we did get one more nice surprise in the form of icicles. They were an interesting sight.

     

The drive back was deliberately slow to reach in time for the second show. This allowed us to get into a very involved 'Anthakshari' - Niya was a very good audience as Divya and myself explored well known popular malayalam and hindi songs.








Soon we were off the snowy area and now the agenda was to watch our current favorite malayalam movie 'Annayum Rasoolum'. The movie was so effective that at the end of  the movie , we were not talking about our first tryst with snow but of our second tryst with the movie.