A Day in Dahlonega at Chestatee, on the square, and Consolidated

This past Sunday, I decided my family and I needed to get out of the house. It was a pretty day and somewhere other than home sounded good. I wanted to limit how much exercise I got, but still wanted to find something to enjoy. I finally came up with heading north to Dahlonega and checking out stuff we've seen before. My kids weren't initially interested, but went along anyway.

Our first stop was the Chestatee Wildlife Preserve. We haven't been here in ages and were happily surprised by the many upgrades to the enclosures they've made since then.  There is at least one enclosure still being built as well.

From here, we headed to downtown Dahlonega for lunch and to explore.  My kids decided the restaurant Dante's On the Square was a good choice.  My daughter and I had reubens, my son had the chicken bacon wrap and hubby had a bbq sandwich.  All were well made. I really liked their home made potato chips too.  From there, we wandered in and out of various shops while waiting for lunch to settle.  My daughter and I went in to the Glassblower's shop (see Wednesdays WW post for what I purchased).  My daughter came out with a dragon holding a crystal.  The prices are reasonable too.

To round out the day, I wanted to go to one of the gold mines.  We went to the closest, which was Consolidated.  We panned ahead of our tour (boys got 2 gold flakes each, girls got 3).  After, my kids and I worked through one of the family size gem buckets.

I can really only speak for myself and I know I enjoyed the day out. But, once we got started the kids seemed to enjoy themselves too.