A Nice Day for a Drive (Sarcasm)

While in Atlanta, I wanted to take the boys to see Stone Mountain.  They were a bit tired from our morning activity, so I figured that a nice rest in the car while we drove out to Stone Mountain would be just the thing.

On the way there, I saw a tornado watch message on the electronic highway information sign.  I figured that it was only a watch, and not a warning, so we should be fine.  I took further comfort in the situation after arriving at Stone Mountain park, because there were park rangers and police patrolling in their cars.  In fact, the weather had turned so bad that I saw more of them than other tourists.

Stone Mountain is basically a giant rock with a big carving on it.  A quartz monzonite rock 825 feet high.  The road around the base of the mountain is 5 miles long.  There is a skyride to the top, but it was closed because of the storm when we were there.  There is also a path up one side of the mountain, but we weren't going to attempt that in the storm, either.  (Honestly, I would never attempt to climb a mountain with Connor and Lex on my own.)  So, basically, we drove around the mountain, hoping for the weather to improve, and then we parked at the base for a bit to have a snack in the car, you know, right next to a park ranger truck so that I would be sure to hear if a tornado was coming our way.





These aren't my photos.  I found them on the internet.  No, when we were there, it was raining so hard that at times we couldn't even see the mountain through the front windshield.

The Confederate Memorial Carving is the largest bas relief sculpture in the world, and it depicts Confederate President Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee and General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.  It turns out that it isn't visible from the parking lot during a storm, though.  We never got to see it.

Lex says he wants to go back when he is bigger, stay at the hotel in the park, and then hike up the mountain to the top.  I think that it sounds like a good plan, and we will hope for better weather when we return.

After Lex fell asleep in his car seat, Connor agreed that it would be okay to drive to see some other things in Georgia.  After consulting with the weather maps, we decided to drive away from the storm.  And so we drove down to Covington, Georgia.

Covington is where Vampire Diaries is filmed.  Of course, it isn't known as Covington on the Vampire Diaries.  Then it is Mystic Falls.  You can take a tour of Mystic Falls when you are in Covington, with stops including the Mystic Grill, Elena's house and the Lockwood Mansion, among others.  But when we got there, the storm had knocked out the power for the entire town.  None of the stop lights were working, and all of the businesses were closed.

Plus, it's kind of hard to take a tour with these two totally zonked out in the back seat:





So, I settled for driving around in the rain and checking things out for myself.  I did manage to find the Mystic Grill:



Mystic Grill is right next to the Town Hall.






There is a square in the middle of the historical downtown, and it reminded me of Burton, Ohio, where we go for the maple syrup festival every year in March.  The Town Hall and Mystic Grill face this green space.

Self-portrait in front of the Mystic Grill.

Later that night we found out that a tornado actually had touched down in Adairsville, Georgia, and ripped apart a big factory.  We saw footage of it on television, and I was glad that we had decided to head away from the storm.  We had been southeast of Atlanta while the tornado was on the north side of Atlanta.

We actually drove through the Adairsville area on 75 N the next morning, and we could clearly see where the tornado had crossed the freeway.  The freeway was down to one lane of traffic in each direction, as cleanup crews were parked on the sides of the road.  All the traffic signs were gone, as were the tops of most of the trees.  We saw a huge billboard pole that had been ripped apart.  And there was debris all over the landscape.  I had never seen the aftermath of a tornado in person before.