Saturday, April 11, 2009

Stone Mountain

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My folks came to town last night, and I took the day off to hang out with them. I was planning on riding with my dad, but bad weather foiled that. We'd talked about all going to Stone Mountain, but he ended up doing some work with my brother and I ended up going there with just my family.

We climbed the Hike-Up trail...

2 - Hike-Up Trailhead5 - Sophie and Kathryn on Hike-Up Trail

There was a lot of old graffiti...

4 - Grafitti on Hike-Up Trail

And some old gum...

6 - Bubble Gum Pole

The "Halfway House"...

8 - Halfway House

The views were pretty nice. There were a bunch of huge vultures circling to the north, black and turkey, but they disappeared when I tried to get a shot of them.

9 - Northern View from Halfway House

Close to the top, ATL in the distance...

12 - Western View From Hike-Up Trail 3

When we got above the trees, it got really windy.

The Iz on the steepest part of the climb...

13 - Iz Near the Top of Stone Mountain

We walked around on the top for a while.

14 - Sophie Checking Out a Pool on Top of Stone Mountain18 - Iz and Sophie On Top of Stone Mountain19 - Sophie Catching Up

We'd planned on taking the gondola down but it was closed because the winds were so high. The wind was amazing. We had to yell to hear each other, and we could lean into it.

With no gondola to ride, we had to hike back down. Sophie's favorite thing is climbing around on rocks, so she was happy to walk.

20 - Descent on Hike-Up Trail

After that, we rode the "ducks", these awesome boat-bus things. On the water, they let the kids drive.

21 - Iz Steering the Duck22 - Sophie Steering the Duck

We did finally get together with my parents and my brother's family at Doc Chey's downtown. There were 10 of us, so we pushed a bunch of tables together outside. Pretty soon it was raining, then pouring, then hailing. But we were pretty well sheltered and we had a good time. Kind of surreal though. How often do you sit down for dinner with your family in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm?

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