Last weekend we drove up to the north Georgia mountains to go on a hike and to get out of the city for a day. We were probably inspired mainly by our friend Lightfoot (not his real name, but better), who had the good sense to leave Atlanta for Portland. Ever since he moved his Instagram feed has been full of epic waterfall shots and wildflower-covered Oregon mountains, and sometimes we feel like packing it all up and moving out west too.

The hiking out there is amazing—at least it is in California, where we did a lot of hiking on our honeymoon. But it’s really good here too. I love hiking the somewhat close Kennesaw Mountain, but there’s something special about hiking further up north, where it’s less crowded and a little bit cooler. It took us around an hour and a half to get to Panther Creek, but once we were on the trail we felt like we were in another state. We went by quite a few waterfalls (not quite Multnomah, but still beautiful), on sandy paths through wildflowers, and around and down rocky ledges. To the falls and back it was a 7 mile hike, and I thought it would be much, much easier than it turned out to be. By the time we hiked back to the car I was exhausted.  And for the next 2 days just about every muscle in my legs hurt.