Callaway Gardens
Pine Mountain, GA
April 21-22, 2007
Our trip to
Callaway in the dead of winter a few months earlier left us wondering
what the gardens looked like in the spring when everything was
blooming. We could not find time to go during the height of the
blooms (we heard the azaleas peaked about three weeks before we were
went), but we finally found time to go in late April.
We left early on Saturday morning and arrived just in time for lunch.
We ate at Chipley's Family Restaurant, and...well...it was
exactly as one would expect given the name. While we were in
downtown Pine Mountain (I use the word "downtown" very loosely), we
stopped by the Visitor's Center to grab some more brochures (Tammy
firmly believes that you can never have too many of them). We
spent some time in an antique shop that also had a used bookstore
attached to it. When then headed into the gardens for the
afternoon.
Since we had already seen pretty much the entire gardens in December,
we made it a point to not rush around this trip...we relaxed more and
didn't feel like we had to see every little thing available. Our
first stop was Mr. Cason's Vegetable Garden, where Tammy had found some
great bird watching in December. There were too many people there
this time of year (as there were actually things growing this time), so
there weren't many birds to be seen. The weather was great, so we
rented some bikes and biked around an area of the gardens where they
have lots of bike trails. We were both reminded how out of shape
we are. We cooled off by the lake at the Discovery Center, then
left the gardens and checked in our hotel. We played pool and had
a snack in the lounge before heading to our room for a nap.
We headed back out for dinner, where we ate at Aspen Mountain Grill.
We managed to save just enough room for a milkshake at the Purple
Cow Cafe. Back at the hotel, we played pool some more and then
played on the dark playground.
Sunday morning, we checked out and ate breakfast at the Callaway
Country Kitchen. We went back into the gardens and visited
the horticultural center, the butterfly center, and a few other
areas of the gardens. We left the gardens and ate lunch at
McGuire's Grill before heading back to Birmingham.
It was a quick but memorable trip.
Since most of the
pictures are either of flowers, butterflies, or us, I decided to not
labor over captions for each picture this time.