Day 6 - Hiking Stone Mountain

Saturday we drove to Atlanta to hike Stone Mountain, yes we drove to the city to hike a mountain but in Georgia you take the mountains where you find them.

It was a bit chilly in the morning but I was still itching to get out on my cycle,









Stone mountain is just that, a granite stone that rises up to 1686 feet which provides vertical climb of about 700 ft that provides spectacular panoramic views of the Atlanta area.


Most of the hiking is on smooth granite that can be slippery, especially since we had quit a bit of rain on Thursday night things were still "moist".

You see lots things on the hike up, but this guy topped it...full turn out gear...brother Don time to step up!  He did look a bit exhausted.












The summit is wide open rock where people gather to sun themselves and fly kites.  Atlanta is lucky to have such a cool place to get outside this close to the city.














Views of Atlanta are spectacular.

















The men conquered the big stone.








We did the two mile hike and wanted more..so we headed around the base to the Confederate Stone Mountain Memorial, which is about another mile in each direction.
























We left Vermont, there was no snow.  Imagine our surprise when we came out of the woods trail in Atlanta, Georgia and there were kids playing in the snow!!! Yeah, we have not snow in Vermont but they have it in Georgia...who would have thought that?

















After our hike we were hungry and met Randy's college buddy Mike and his fiance at a Pizza place in Atlanta, it was good pizza and company.








June decided it was warm enough to ride back to Randy's on the motorcycle but did not want to ride the interstate with all the big trucks so I plotted the no interstate route into my GPS.  In hind sight, I should have at least got outside of Atlanta before I abandoned the interstates, but hey we got a nice tour of the Atlanta perimeter. Overall it was actually a pretty nice ride, Route 23 is beautiful taking you by Lake Juliette where we saw a beautiful sunset.  The long way home was not much farther but took roughly an hour longer but it was a much less stressful route. Overall I put 250 miles on the Harley and the weather was beautiful.