Stone Mountain Campground

Who would think that driving 65 miles would take.all.day.  Lessons learned: get ready to go first thing in the morning.  No, scratch that.  Correction: start getting ready the day(s) before.  Between storing items for safe travel, cleaning up (and down! Don’t get me started on the floors😳), and trying to savor the last bit of a great campsite, moving can take all day.  We took for granted that moving so close would take less time.  And by we, that really means me, as Chris was trying to hurry me along but I was insisting to finish cleaning before we left.)

We finally started driving at around 1:15 and arrived at our site at 5:45.  We traveled straight there! Our short little trip included awesome points like Atlanta rush hour traffic, navigation drama (our current system includes two cell phones, turn-by-turn directions that are supposedly RV safe, and an Apple map app), dumping our tanks on an incline, leveling with blocks (common, but this was a new one for us), and our favorite part: pulling our toy hauler onto a mountain road with an incline we weren’t sure our RV would be safe on.  At least we know how better to handle that last one (get out and check, check, check, and go SLOWLY).

After all that fun stuff, as soon as we got settled, the kids found LOTS of other kids to play with at this campground, and we hardly saw them all weekend.  They spent hours riding bikes and scooters around our loop with other kids and also fished and swam in the lake.

The highlight for me of our weekend at Stone Mountain was the light show.  The music and tributes to so many periods of time and different groups of people was incredible.  There was a laser light show projected onto the side of the mountain.  Even though all three of our kids were asleep by the end (it begins at 9:30), it was well worth our time.

The big boys all hiked to the top of Stone Mountain.  Apparently, the view was amazing, and the challenge of the hike was also fun for them.  Biking to and from the base of the mountain from our campsite was an added bonus, which sent them straight to the pool afterward.  Chris loved it so much he hiked to the top a second time alone.

Lastly about the campground there, the roads on the loop that our site was on were really old and had lots of potholes and roots that had destroyed them.  They were narrow and in two spots also included a questionable incline.  We were so nervous for the drive out of the campground.  But we made it due to Chris’s quickly evolving 5th wheel driving skills.  Wide turns, driving slowly, me watching from behind the whole time, and the big kids playing by the dock during the whole ordeal worked well for us all.  I’m glad we went, but I don’t want to go back to that campground with our current rig again.

We are all growing a lot from our experiences so far.  Growth is sometimes (often) painful, as we all know.  Still, I’m glad we are doing this together.