Welcome to Alpine Helen!

Sorry, it's been a long time since my last entry. I'm going to try to do one blog entry per week from now on. I'm also going to be doing one vlog per week on youtube. You can watch them on my second youtube channel: www.youtube.com/catgrltv, but they'll both be about the same things probably. So, I've been meaning to write an entry about my vacation for the 4th of July and I haven't gotten around to it until now.
My mom, my stepdad, & I went to Helen, GA and camped at Unicoi State Park. It was awesome! My parents want to live there now. I wouldn't mind living there. It has a great climate. There's no big grocery stores or places like Walmart there. Every building in the city is built to look like buildings from a town that you would find in the European Alps (even Wendy's!). There's lots of little stores to check out (including a glass blowing shop) & little attractions. There's a haunted house, an auto museum, a model railroad, etc. The only one we went to was the model railroad. It was awesome! My mom makes dollhouse miniatures (I'm trying to do it too but I'm not patient enough to make really tiny things, lol) so she thought it was really cool to see it. The model was of Germany from the North Sea to the Alps. There was a circus, a winefest, a crash on the Autobahn, Oktoberfest, a UFO crash, some houses on fire, & a bungee jumper (that really moved!) among lots of other things. They even have some hot air balloons that fly over the model and there are cable cars up in the mountains. Some of the areas (the sea, the train station, Oktoberfest) even have sounds of boats, announcements, or people screaming on rides. I took about 70 pictures of the model & put them on Facebook. I think I might put them on Photobucket so more people can look at them. We also went to a place that has a bunch of tarantulas & lizards. The lizards were pretty cool, but the spiders really creeped me out. They also had a huge albino python.
The greatest thing about Helen is the tubing! If you ever go there, then you have to do this, it's a blast! The Chattahoochee River flows right through Helen and you can get on an inner tube float down the river. I think there are 3 companies that you can rent the tubes from. You park at the starting point, get on the tube, float down the river & go through town, & then you get on a bus that takes you back to your car. You have a choice of going on a 1 or 2 hour float. They also have waterparks that you can go in (though they cost extra). My stepdad decided that we needed to bring some sticks with us in case we got stuck on rocks so he found some tree limbs for us to use (you can also buy a stick from the company). All along the river, they are people who set up picnics & barbeques so they can watch all the people float by on their tubes. I got stuck on a rock right in front of one of the barbeques & ended up flipping over. The current was pushing me down & I couldn't breath for a little bit, but my stepdad hurried over & pulled me out of the water. I was hoping that I wouldn't get wet, lol. As you float through the city, there are some restaurants right on the side of the river where everyone stands there & watches you. One restaurant even had people on microphones narrating what was happening to people. At one point my stepdad got stuck on a rock & they were all betting on whether he'd flip over or not. It was hilarious. When we got to the end, my stepdad decided that he was hungry & we went to a Mexican restaurant. After we were done eating, we decided to go tubing down the river again. It was fun, but not as fun as the 1st time. There were more rude people & there were tons of huge families that had all their tubes tied together so you couldn't get around them. We put sunscreen on out faces & arms before we went tubing, but forgot our legs. My sunburn has been peeling for about a week now. It's really annoying. I also got a couple bruises & a huge, nasty scrape on my legs from falling on the rocks. I don't even remember when I got the scrape. We were so tired from tubing that we didn't even bother going to see the fireworks.
When my parents made the reservations for our campsite, they chose one in the "Squirrel's Nest." It's 16 wooden platforms that are built on a hillside. It was a nice place to camp, but we didn't know that it was a walk-in campsite until we got there. There was a huge group of cubscouts that took up half the platforms & they were really noisy (they had a huge jedi vs sith battle with glow stick light sabers), but it was a fun place to camp.
My mom just told me that they just made reservations again & we're going back to Helen for Labor Day. I'm sure that it will be fun! I want to go to the auto museum & the haunted house this time. Well, I need to go to bed. Talk to everyone later!