The Ros-stock McLure's: Stone Mountain Camping

This past weekend we packed up our tent, sleeping bags, camp food and air mattresses and headed to Stone Mountain campground with Sean and Lindara and crew and cousin Jenn and her two kiddos. We all got campsites right next to the lake and set up shop for the weekend. Every meal was planned and executed to the Nth degree. We definitely didn't go hungry! Friday night it rained in the middle of the night and the wind howled for hours keeping the adults awake. Thank goodness the kids could sleep through it! Saturday we found a green space at the front of the campground where the kids could play soccer, football, kickball and just run around uninhibited all day long. Saturday afternoon we hiked to the top of the mountain which was extremely windy but beautiful. I made the mistake of giving the boys hydration backpacks that held 2 liters of water. Needless to say, they would drink the entire lot on the way up and then have to pee 4 or 5 times on the way down...and it was crowded. It's hard to find a private place to pee in the woods when there's very few woods around and people were everywhere.

Saturday night we went to the laser show to show the kids what awesome graphics we grew up with. It was a pretty big let down for the adults who remember certain things about it from our wonder years, but the kids seemed to think it was ok. It wasn't their highly developed iPad graphics or anything, but entertaining nonetheless. At one point I was trying to explain to Nolan about the civil war and the north vs the south and how it was a long, long, long, looooong time ago. He looked up at me and innocently asked, "did Nana watch it on tv when she was little?" Ha! When I told him that it was so long ago they didn't have tv's during that war, he said, "oh, did she just take pictures of it?" Oops, forgot to tell him that the war happened before tv's AND waaaaay before Nana was born. It was funny, so I just laughed. (That will make for an interesting essay paper when he's in high school!)

Sunday morning, Lindara woke us up before the high crack of dawn so we could jump in the car and drive the 4 miles from the campsite to the base of the big granite mountain to partake in the sunrise hike/Easter service. There was so much traffic! I know, weird for Atlanta to have traffic (not really) but at 6am inside the park, it was crazy. We parked and made the 1 mile walk to the base just to do the mile hike up. We were all tired and cold but I'm so proud to say we ALL made it up before the sun rose! It was such an amazing sight to see the big beautiful sun coming up over to the east when all the while behind us the moon was still full and bright to the west. It was way to cold to stay for the service, let alone listen to it, so we headed back down the mountain and made our way back to camp to pack up and head home. We were dirty, stinky, smokey, sore, tired, and exhausted but it was an awesome weekend and we can't wait to do it again!