Teal Mini Swap and Camping

Hello everyone, happy weekend! I hope you are enjoying yours. We had a great week camping with perfect weather and lots of hiking. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been working on quilting Maggie’s First Dance Quilts by Jacquelynne Steves. Make sure you check back in on Monday, November 7th, to see the final versions.

Right before we left, I received my Teal Mini Swap from my swap partner, Melissa.

Isn’t it wonderful!?! The quilting is exquisite. Melissa used Aurifil thread for the quilting and she used her walking foot to make the spiral. The circles are so even and perfectly spaced, I know she put a lot of time in to it. She used two layers of batting, Hobbs Natural cotton and Hobbs Tuscany Polyester. It does make the quilting stand out more when you use two layers.

I was also pleased to get these goodies with the mini. I know we will enjoy the soup and the dips. Melissa is the co-founder and editor of Generation Q magazine. The quilts in the magazine have a modern flare to them. There were also so many great articles in this issue, more than in most quilting magazines. I’m going to check Barnes and Noble to see if they carry it, if not, I may get a subscription. It’s published quarterly so check it out if you get a chance.

We camped at Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia, which has some great state parks. We left on Monday and spent three nights. We had some color to the leaves when we got there, but more when we left. Unfortunately, we are in a severe drought in the northwest part of the state, so there was also a lot of brown leaves and droopy trees.

This was our first time camping without the kids. The campground was full with mostly people our age or older. Made it very quiet at night.

I made this Cross-Stitch piece a long time ago to hang outside the camper. I have a small camper wall hanging in progress now that I will try to find a place for inside. There are so many cute camping fabrics and patterns available now.

This is our view from our campsite. We were lucky to find one that was facing the woods instead of other campers. 

The park sits on top of Lookout Mountain and the western edge of the park looks over a valley. We found a place to watch the sunset on the first night. So pretty to see it setting over the next ridge.

So if you have a sunset picture, you have to have a sunrise picture. This one is from our campsite.

The first day we hiked a new trail for us, the Sitton’s Gulch Trail. It worked it’s way from the bottom of the canyon, up to the first set of falls. We are looking at the east rim of the canyon through the trees. My son showed me that the Health app on my phone recorded mileage and steps. It also records floors climbed. We hiked 4 miles and 42 floors that day. The map shows about 600 ft in elevation change. Overall, this trail was good without a lot of roots and rocks. Unfortunately when we reached the falls, there was very little water in them.

The second day, we hiked the West Rim Loop Trail. This is a moderately strenuous trail that loops around the upper edge of the west rim. We started at 10:00 so it was hard to get good pictures looking towards the east and into the sun.

This is looking over the valley on the west side of the trail, almost where we watched the sunset.

We are on the northeast side of the trail here, looking at the east rim of the canyon. It was a beautiful day, but you can see the brown patch of trees on the rim. The West Rim Loop trail has lots of ups and downs and is very rocky and rooty but is worth the hike at any time of year. That day we hiked 3.6 miles and 36 floors (about 300 feet of elevation change according to the map).

After our long hikes each morning, we chilled in the afternoon. I was able to complete the piecing on October’s Blocks on the Go hexagon blocks then. Not a bad setting for doing some hand work.

Here we are ready to leave. You can see in this picture how much the leaves had changed in the few days we were there. We could definitely tell on the drive down Lookout Mountain that they had changed.

Hope you don’t mind the overload of camping pictures, but it was such a nice relaxing time. I’m ready to go again. Thanks for stopping by.

Brenda