Hiking Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain is a large park near Atlanta and our hotel. The weather was so gorgeous it was hard to imagine we had just left ahead of a hurricane earlier that morning. Right after entering the park we headed straight for the hiking trail up Stone Mountain.

The trail starts at the base of the mountain at the Confederate Hall Historical & Environmental Education Center. We did a bit of poking around there, changed clothes and grabbed a quick snack before hitting the trail.

When we got to the "trail" we found out why they call it Stone Mountain. It wasn't so much a trail as it was a yellow painted line on the big giant rock...

It got a little more trail-y as we got into the loblolly pines that grow on the mountain...

But my favorite part of the trail was all of the "graffiti" carved into the rock. Some was new but some were well over 100 years old!

Once we got out of the trees there was quite a nice view of Atlanta in the distance and it made for a good excuse to stop and rest... (and check out the Gum Pole) :) 

Then we climbed to the next view point...

This part was so steep they had to add hand rails!

Then we climbed some more... 

And reached the top!

That was a VERY long mile! But totally worth it!

I suppose we could have paid to take the easy way up but where's the fun in that???

Then it was time to head back down. Easier but tough on the legs!

After downing some (ok a LOT) of water, we hopped in the car to our next stop...