Sunday, December 19, 2010

Stone Mountain

Last weekend I tortured the kids at Stone Mountain. This weekend I figured I needed to make up for that. Isabel had said she wanted to ride the gondola and the train, so we went back and did just that.

The gondola:

 Gondola

It was really foggy, but we could still see the mountain pretty well. The ride was shorter than we expected, but the lady driving the gondola was entertaining.

We walked around on top for a few minutes.

 Top of Stone Mountain in the Fog

It was cold and windy, but not as cold and windy as last weekend. Still, it was nice to know we could just walk back inside and take a ride back down. In the building at the top, they have these placards talking about the wildlife in the area. Apparently there are little shrimp that live in the pools of water up on top of the mountain that you can see in the summer. Wild! I'm going to have to go back to see that next year.

Next, we rode the scenic railway.

 Scenic Railway

It was neat to ride but not really all that scenic. It passed by a bunch of old granite quarries, and an old railway station, and there were old train cars parked here and there. I guess, in antiquity, the train was used to transport granite blocks from the quarries out into the world.

Finally, we hiked around the Nature Garden Trail.

 Girls at Shoal on Nature Garden Trail

I bet you were thinking "Yeah, I'm not sure riding trains and gondolas really counts as outdoor activities." Well we did go walking in the woods. The trail was short though and Isabel's feet didn't even have time to get cold.

We found a cool hollow tree too.

 Me in Hollow Tree

Also the had this little interpretive loop and I one of the signs showed this little purple berry thing that I always forget the name of. Beautyberry. Now I won't forget. Or if I do, then I can look back here. Man, that's something that's absent from the internet. With all this knowledge at our fingertips, still, if you know what something looks like, but don't know what it is, there's no easy way to find out. No way to google that up. Same with music. What song is that? It goes da-dun-da-da. If somebody can come up with an intuitive way to do either of those things, that would be great.

We followed up our little adventure with some Doc Chey's, of course, and Sophie ate swan chicken.

 Swan Chicken

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