I had made reservations for three nights at Stone Mountain Park in order to see a few houses north of Atlanta and catch up with an old friend from HS. I’m glad we no longer needed to look at houses because we spent the entire time enjoying the park, downtown Atlanta and watching the Braves play a practice game (for fre-e-e-e!)
Once we got set up at the park’s campground, we took the bikes off the rack and rode around. The park is huge and super pretty! We spent several hours riding around the mountain and stopped to explore various sights, like the old Grist Mill, Quarry Exhibit and Carillon. The mountain was pretty impressive, especially with the carving on its side. Its name is very fitting, since It really is just a huge mountain of stone!
We hung out with Gary and Stephanie one day and left it up to Gary to decide what we’d do. He decided we’d ride our bikes on a portion of the Atlanta Beltline, which is a trail that goes completely around Atlanta. It started off great, but then Gary suggested we go downtown to see a few sights and didn’t realize downtown was a mile or two away and mostly uphill from the trail. It didn’t bother Randy or me, since our bikes were electric, but Stephanie had a cute bike with no gears on it. I let her try out my electric bike for a while and I think she’s now planning to buy one of her own, haha. Gary eventually traded bikes with her and did most of the uphill part with no gears — what a nice guy!! We went through the Centennial Olympic Park then stopped at the CNN building for lunch at their food court.
Our last stop was at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium where we hung out while Gary took an Uber back to his truck to come pick us up instead of them having to ride their bikes back. It should have been mostly downhill at that point, but it was the few uphill parts he wasn’t interested in doing; and no one else volunteered to trade bikes, ha. Unfortunately, there was a convention letting out across the street at the Georgia World Conference Center so traffic was pretty backed up. But it was a beautiful day so we just found a spot in the shade on a large grassy area to sit and wait for him. I enjoyed getting to know Stephanie, who is also from Louisiana, a bit more while we waited.
We got free tickets to go see an Atlanta Braves Workout in Truist Park, which was cool. MaryAnn, Gary and Stephanie’s neighbor joined us on the outing. We got there late, but were able to see a few innings and take some pics to remember the fun evening! (Gary was very enthusiastic about taking selfies!) We walked through the entertainment area next to the stadium, called The Battery, on the way to and from the parking garage. Randy’s grandma was a huge Braves fan and hardly missed watching a game, so Randy used to follow them when he was young. Even though we’re not big baseball fans now, it was still a special experience.
When I booked the reservation for the campground, it was because they had availability on short notice and could fit our big rig. But after looking at the website more, I noticed their Stone Mountain Park Pumpkin Festival sounded like it would be pretty cool, so I got tickets for it. We didn’t know how crowded it would get or how long it would take to see everything, so we got there when it opened at 2pm. A lot of it is geared towards kids, but it entertained us, too. The retelling of the Three Little Pigs story was cute, where the wolf wasn’t actually trying to eat the pigs; he just had hay allergies that made him sneeze and blow the first house down. Then he went to the next house to apologize, etc. It had some funny lines in it and made us chuckle.
When “All the King’s Horsemen” came out for a comedy act, I thought it was going to be way too cheesy, but they soon won me over and had me chuckling at them, too. They were actually pretty funny to watch in costume, with the fake legs and tail bouncing just the right amount to make you believe the horse was actually galloping.
The rode the Summit Skyride up to the top of the mountain and walked around a bit for some scenic views before riding back down. It started drizzling a tiny bit during the day, but not enough to care. Then around 7:30, it was enough for us to wear our rain jackets, but still not terrible. Once we were done looking at the lights, we found some shelter to wait for the drone and light show. Unfortunately, I guess they didn’t have enough time to get the drones ready even though it had stopped raining, so they just did the light show on the side of the mountain, which was still very cool! We had thought we’d go home early, after that first showing, but decided to hang around another hour to see if they’d use the drones in their second showing. Which they did, so I’m glad we stayed — it was cool, too!
I’d definitely recommend Stone Mountain Park to anyone looking for something fun to do for a day, or for a beautiful place to camp. We didn’t have time to wander around the Historic Square, so I’d even go back for another stay, given the opportunity. Two thumbs up — well done!
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