June 15, 2021
I can tell my humans are getting ready to put me in the
little house that moves. And I never
caught the critter that was moving the ground.
I wonder what it is. I still want
it.
My morning walk took me around ‘the valley’. With street names like Balboa, Van Nuys,
Catalina, etc. I might as well be walking around the San Fernando Valley. I got an early start as we are hitting the
road today.
As we head to I16 WEST (towards home!), we say goodbye to
the beautiful marshes and streams. Bye Bye
east coast! There is a bit of morning
traffic as we head away from Savannah.
On interstates, there are always a lot of trucks. It is green, woodsy with occasional
ponds. We listen to podcasts. Near Macon, we switch so I can drive. You know what that means???? Spouse has to navigate. Yes, he needs to pick up a map and look at
it.
We are headed to Stone Mountain, near Atlanta. It is a carving done by the same artist that
did Mount Rushmore, but it is a tribute to the Confederacy and all the states
that seceded. Lady Gagarmin wants to
take us on interstates the entire way, but I want to avoid Atlanta so I want to
take Highway 20, up to Conyers than head to Stone Mountain. But that means… Spouse has to navigate… poor guy, but ultimately, he figures it
out. When I get off the interstate, I
figured we could switch drivers, but there was road construction. ARG!
Nowhere to pull over and traffic was moving a mile per hour! I WANT OUT!
I whine, I complain, but ultimately I see a place where we can maneuver
and I jump on it! The signs say highway
20 this way, but they also say highway 20 that way. Huh?
We are going to have to depend on Lady Gagarmin to get us through this
mess.
After a quick snack, it was Spouse’s turn to maneuver in the
road construction nightmare. But wait…
all the traffic is gone. Easy peasy, he
pulls out and we head north on highway 20 based on Lady Gagarmin’s direction. It is a pretty road, rural with beautiful
estates, farms and ranches. Green is the
color of the day once again. Ultimately,
Lady Gagarmin gets us to Stone Mountain.
They would not take phone reservations so we trusted they would have a
spot for us and they did. Since we had
to pay to get through the gates, it would have been disappointing if we couldn’t
get a space, but alas, not an issue. And
it is a beautiful spot.
The RV park is on one of the many lakes within the
park. The sites are large, and they are
staggered for the most part so you have privacy. There are fire rings, and for Rudy… there are
squirrels. Stone Mountain is a
recreation area. It has the RV park, two
golf courses, a Marriott, exhibit halls and some kids stuff that we bypassed,
although the animatronic dinosaurs were kind of cool. There is a sky tram that takes you the 900
feet to the top of the carving, but it is closed due to winds. We find that laughale since the winds are
pretty mild. As skiiers, Mammoth would scoff
at not opening their gondola in light breezes like this!
The carving itself is quite different from Mount Rushmore. While Mount Rushmore morphed into the presidents’ faces, the carving on Stone Mountain is etched into a focal area on the bald stone. It really is quite intricate in its details. It features Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on horseback holding their hats over their hearts. Although we never could find a museum that goes into the carving, I know that it was in process when the artist got a commission to do Mount Rushmore, so he left Stone Mountain at that point in the hands of his assistants. People were pissed, but hey, I guess money is money!
At night, we went to the laser show, which supposedly is the
largest in the country. It was past our
bedtime, but we somehow managed to enjoy the music and antics of the
crowd. It wasn’t too crowded which made
it nice.
When we left, it was dark…
and we should have turned left before we turned right… Oops!
It took us a while to find our way back.
Saw lots of deer though! Rudy
chastised us for being out so late. He
isn’t used to that!
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