Happy New Year! We hope you and your family had a very happy holiday season and are greeting 2026 with excitement and anticipation! We made our rounds to see various family members for Christmas, and then rang in the New Year with friends at Tallulah Gorge State Park in northern Georgia. While our focus for all this time was to spend it with those who are important to us, we did manage to take some photos of our time at Tallulah Gorge to share.
While there, we stayed in the state park’s campground. We stayed in site 26 and our friends were in sites 28 and 30. One thing to note about this campground…many sites are actually much longer than the online description states. We didn’t take the time to go around and make a list of all the sites that were bigger than stated, but we can vouch for the sites our group occupied. Site 26 is listed as a 50 foot site, but when hooked up we are almost 50 feet, and we still had tons of room to spare. It is probably closer to 75 feet long. The “25 foot” site 28 accommodated our friends in a truck camper with lots of extra space for a tent shelter, and site 30 is WAY longer than listed. The website says it is 25 feet long and our friend who has a 30 foot trailer was easily able to get his trailer and truck in there with lots of unused real estate. We wish we had checked out all the sites so we would know for the future, but we were way too busy having fun for all that!
One thing to note about Tallulah Gorge…if you want to hike to the floor of the gorge, you must have a permit to do so. Only 100 permits are issued per day and they are given out on a first come, first served basis at the Interpretive Center. We chose not to do any of the gorge floor hikes.
Instead, we did the Hurricane Falls Loop Trail. This route utilizes parts of the North Rim Trail and the South Rim Trail, along with a massive staircase that takes you down to a suspension bridge, and another staircase that takes you to the base of Hurricane Falls at river level, if you choose to go that far. (We did!) Note that this means there are a LOT of stairs to climb down, and then, of course, back up – over 500 stairs each way. It also pretty much takes you to the gorge floor without having to have a permit. Without the permit you are not allowed to leave the steps and boardwalk area, but you can still get down to experience the river and the base of Hurricane Falls. It was a great hike with some great views, and the suspension bridge was a nice experience, too! While we don’t recommend this trail to anyone with health or mobility issues, our group agreed that it wasn’t as difficult as we expected. If you are in reasonably good health you should be fine as long as you take your time.
In addition to the loop hike, we also completed the parts of the North Rim Trail and the South Rim Trail that were not part of the Hurricane Falls Loop. These trails took us to various overlooks into the canyon where numerous waterfalls can be viewed, as well as to the Wallenda towers where the tightrope was attached that Karl Wallenda crossed the gorge on in 1970. Finally, the North Rim Trail even took us to Inspiration Point, which is the highest point in the park.
As if that wasn’t enough, we also took the short walk down to the beach area on Tallulah Lake. The beach is currently closed for the season, but we couldn’t miss watching the park’s planned Polar Bear Plunge there on New Year’s Day. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get very close to watch, and had to do so through the tree branches, but even from a distance it was obvious that all the participants were having a great – although chilly – time! In our group, we all teased one another and tried to egg each other on to participate, but there were no takers…
We had such a great time on this trip! Thanks a ton to our friends Mike, Michelle, Matt, and Deven for helping us start 2026 off on the right foot! We look forward to many more adventures and camping trips to come!
Until next time!
