May 28, 2012
One thing on my bucket list was visiting a place called Fort Mountain State Park. When we lived in the Papermill Ward my Visiting Teaching companion, Vonae, who was also the Sunday school teacher planned a little trip to go along with the lesson she was teaching. We were learning from the Book of Mormon that year. This place has a wall of rocks that is speculated to have been built by some of the last Indians. Vonae was going to teach us about the last battle in the Book of Mormon. Anyway, I probably didn't explain it very well, but it's a place I wanted to see for it's potential historical value. It was gorgeous driving up through Northern Georgia and seeing a few mountains. We really enjoyed the height. Henry wasn't too happy that we wouldn't let him walk with his brothers. Let's just say he is a little slower than they are.
Here is the wall. Really, we missed it the first time and then we read a sign and realized what we should have looked for. A bunch of rocks piled up. Not quite what I was expecting but I guess I wasn't really sure of what I was expecting.
All the boys loved looking for rocks. Lincoln kept picking up the biggest rocks he could. Parker had the little blue camera with him most of the time and would take pictures of the huge rocks like the one next to them in this picture.
Standing next to another big rock. Wow!
A tower at the top of the mountain. Not much there and really not a lot of history to it. We did get to see a snake and butterflies and some other bugs.
Here is Linc with one of his rocks that he found.
One of the overlooks. We would have let Henry out but as you can see it's not really safe with the huge gaps. I was worried with the other two looking over to see what was on the other side. Don't you just love the blue sky? It was a beautiful day.
Walking along the rock wall.
Our family photo on the rock wall. We had to set up the camera because we couldn't find anyone to take a picture. It turned out alright though.
Once we finished our little hike we took the boys swimming. We forgot the camera during this part of the day. The lake had a small area roped off so that you could only go in to about 2 1/2 ft. The crazy thing was just how many people were there. You could barely sit down without stretching your arms and touching someone you didn't know. Lincoln had a blast though, he put his arm swimmers on and he was in the water the entire time. I stayed with Henry by the waters edge to play in the sand. Parker was back and forth. Willie eventually took the older boys out as far as you could go and they had so much fun putting dirt on the rope and then knocking it off.
Our last activity of the day was the paddle boats. I was excited for this activity but soon became disappointed when they wouldn't let Henry go. Looking at their life vests I can see why he wouldn't be let on the boat. Willie knew I wanted to go but I didn't think it was good for me at the time so he took the two older boys for a half an hour ride.
Parker was super excited to do the paddle boats. He had been looking forward to it all day long.
They liked the words on the back of the life jackets.
When they got back the boys were happy to tell me about a fish they saw jump out of the water as well as a canoe that had tipped over.
Here is a view from up high on the mountain. Gorgeous. I will miss all the trees.
On the drive home the boys were pretty tired but Parker did his best to stay awake so that he could watch some railroad tracks that followed the road for quite some time. He is always so excited to see trains or train tracks or even the signs for an upcoming train track. Perhaps we should have done more to teach our kids about the importance of Memorial day but as for now we just enjoyed being together as a family.
