Stone Mountain Park

 ^^Tram to top of Stone Mountain

^^I spy Atlanta City on the horizon!

Can you believe how pretty this part of the world is? When you're in the middle of it, all you can see are the trees on either side of you. It's cool to get above everything and be like, "Hey! I live in there!" Also, you can see everyone with their blankets on the lawn, waiting for the laser show (details below).

One of our favorite attractions in Atlanta is Stone Mountain Park. It’s basically this giant stone dome that the locals call a mountain because it’s higher than anything else nearby, but really it’s just a cool-looking stone hill that takes half an hour to climb. I love that we have it though, because every so often it’s refreshing to get above everything and be able to look out over the canopy of trees we live in.

On our first or second weekend in Atlanta, Jared took me to the Stone Mountain Laser Show. He had bought VIP passes or something like that, so before the show started we were able to take the tram to the top of the mountain and look out, and we also took a train ride around the park. The laser show itself was fun! Stone Mountain has a huge carving on it of some confederates in the Civil War. The laser show is a little show of some old-school “laser” clips (basically just old-school digital drawings with random storylines) projected over the carving, and then they play lots of patriotic songs and country music in the background. It's probably really corny and meant for little kids, but I started crying during the show because I was just so happy to have a place to call home with Jared in AMERICA. Grenada was a wonderful experience and really pretty and all, but man, I stinkin love this country.

Anyway, during and after the laser show they shoot off fireworks, and there are even a couple times when they light these giant flame-thrower things that heat up the whole park for a moment. We’ve been back a couple times since that first weekend. Once we went with some of our Grenada friends to see the laser show again, and twice more we went to hike the mountain. I’ve even gone alone once or twice with Savanna just to explore the hiking trails in the forest around the lake at the mountain’s base. When Jared and I settle down someday it will need to be somewhere with lots of remote trails and nature to explore. You can get that here if you drive an hour or two outside the city, but Stone Mountain’s our only nearby option (although we do basically live in the middle of a beautiful forest, so every road we drive down is scenic). I’ll have to do a post about fall in Atlanta soon. We’re on the tail end of it, and it really is breathtaking.