For the fourth we went up to Helen, in the North Georgia "mountains" (that's what the locals call them but they are really just hills). This town is supposed to be modeled after the Bavarian Alps, there is no real reason why except to bring in tourists. If any of you have ever been to Solvang, California it is the same kind of idea. As you can see, everything in the town has to look German.

The Chattahoochie runs through the town and they sells tickets for $3 to get a tube and a bus ride to the top of town. Then you ride through town and it normally takes about 2 hours, I think you go maybe about 3 miles. Well Georgia is in a drought, and the river was LOW so it took WAY longer like 3 and a half hours. Matt got stuck more than me, and he wasn't too happy about the rocky ride. There were so many times along the ride that we wished our camera was waterproof. Alot of the homes and restaurants decorate for the 4th and people just sit and watch all of the tubers.
We get to the end and go get our keys from inside (they check them for you) then we go out to the car and get our bag with extra clothes and towels and stuff, I head into the change room and Matt decides he is going to stay in his swim suit. So when I come out, I get back to the car and he is standing there. He says "you have the keys" ummm....they must be in the bag, take everything out...they aren't there. Well they must be in the trunk. I'm sure of it. So we go inside and call the locksmith...Jay...Jay doesn't work on the fourth of July. BUT we can stand on the side of the road and flag down a police officer and they will be able to help us. Do we have a choice?! Nope. So we are waiting on the side of the road and then these cops drive by (its a pretty small town) we flag them down and tell them our problem. They get out to help us and they don't have a lock kit. So they call another cop. So we have three cops, two cop cars, and two cops working on unlocking our car...they took forever! Finally, they unlock it, we pop the trunk and we....pretend that the keys are in there because we are too embarassed to admit that we don't know where they are. We wait for the cops to drive off, (and yeah, we are waving and saying thanks when we still don't know where our keys are) Riiiiight. Turns out I rolled them up in my towel with my wet suit. Guess it's a good thing Jay wasn't working or we would have paid him $50 for nothing!

Then we walked around the town and checked out all the freaks and weirdos. I swear they find their way to Helen. All these stores have this German front and then inside they are selling stars and bars t-shirts. I got the most delicious chocolate caramel apple from the candy shop, they are my absolute FAVORITE thing!

Then we headed back to Alpharetta where we had burgers on the grill and watched the beginning of the Braves game. We had a ton of fireworks (see American Pride post!) so we went over to the Guzowski's to light them off. They had a bunch too so the fireworks show was really long. They had some illegals so we were able to do some that shot up in the air and exploded! All in all the day was really fun. You can see from the video. The resolution is bad, maybe someone knows how to remedy that. I'm not sure if it is the hosting or what but the video on our videocamera is much clearer than what you see here. Oh well enjoy anyway!