Tanner Life

"I'm leaving...on a midnight train to Georgia"


Ok, it's more like a 6:15ish train..and it was around the bottom of Stone Mountain...but you get the idea!

Sunday Day#2 of our weekend adventures:

We started our morning off with attending church at First Baptist of Powder Springs. (Where we both grew up at church and were married, if ya didn't already know that) It was their celebration of the 4th and super duper heart warming and soul stirring!! We saw tons of familiar faces and it was a fabulous morning!!

After a quick nap (those are required if you're baptist on Sundays you know) we were off to Stone Mountain. It takes about an hour for us to get there from our house, not too bad. If you haven't been there, check out their website! (stonemountain.com) There is sooo much to do out there now! There are trails both up and around the mountain, the sky-ride, train, 4-D movie, Cross Roads country town, Ride the DUCKS (yep, they have some too), golf, water park, river boat, antique car museum, shows and on and on..... Our goal was to fit in one adventure and catch the laser show!

Here is a picture of the Cross Roads area. It reminds me of frontierland at Disney. Stone Mountain now is partially "owned" by Dollywood and it favors that as well. There are several stores, places to eat (fried chicken, taters & onions cooked out on the HUGE skillets, hotdogs, hamburgers, home made ice cream, funnel cakes, turkey legs, etc..) the 4-D theater, the tree house (a giant play area with all sorts of gadgets for kids), the great barn (an inside play area with foam balls, etc..for kids), a magic show, a few other shows, candle makers, black smiths and more of that kind of stuff. Fun place to hang out! You can pay for each individual thing you do or for $22 you can do anything in the entire park all day. (including the things not located in Cross Roads: riverboat, sky-ride, etc..) If you do nothing, it's $8 per car to get into the park. (You can see the laser show and walk around tons of places)

We also went on the train ride around the moutain. It's about a 25 minute ride with a stop and mini show in the middle. We ate a fried chicken supper and went off to find a spot to claim for the laser show. It's insane and about 10,000 (ok, give or take a few) of our closest friend were there. There wasn't a blade of grass, rock or even cement walk way that wasn't claimed by the time the show started. CRAZINESS! People camp out hours before the show starts or at least claim their spot and go off to do other things. People bring picnics, games, balls & gloves, chairs, blankets and even pillows out to enjoy the evening! We had our blanket, chairs and a deck of UNO cards..what more do ya need?!

I can't think of anything more patriotic than the laser show with it's tributes to the love of our country!! Between "Proud to be an American", the sports team tribute, "Living in America", a whole ton of other songs and then the "American Trilogy" with Elvis...what more can ya do? I'm such a sucker for the laser show!!! (and such a red-neck I guess?!)

It was tons of fun and we ended up leaving when we thought the fireworks were over! (They weren't and we listened to them for quite awhile as we made it to the car, that's the biggest firework show EVER) It was ok though, because we beat the crowd and that was a miracle!! Fun day~