Living on a Lean – June 4, 2024, Amity, AL, USA

We got lucky over the Memorial Day Holiday and ended up at a great campsite in Winfield, GA.  We hiked the Rock Dam Trail multiple times which is a great 5.6-mile trail.  Then we made the mistake of thinking we had a plan to go west and started towards a last-minute detour to Stone Mountain, GA.  Now mind you I must take credit since this was my idea based on a photo I saw online.  It was a shitshow from the beginning.  First off, it is close to Atlanta and all the fun traffic that brings with it, so the drive over was a bit wrenching.  Then we got there, and it cost $20 just to get into the park before we even paid for our campsite.  It was considered a “parking fee.”  The campsite was small, awful, and three times the cost of where we had just come from.  Very hilly, every campsite was on a slant, and although there were a lot of trails, we were 2.5 miles from the beginning of any of them. Do you know what it’s like to try and do everything on a slant for 4 days?  It’s unfun.

So, day one we sucked it up and walked over the 2.5 uphill trek to the Cherokee Trail.  All in all, we ended up with a 6-mile hike by the time we walked over to the trail, hiked, then walked back.  Whew!  We did this the next couple of days and ended up with a 7-mile hike one day since we sprinkled in the Kings trail on Indian Island one day.  It was a pretty area, but quite crowded on the trails which we have not been used to. 

The last day we decided to drive over to the Walk-Up Trail which wasn’t long, however because of our parking options it only cut off a mile and we still walked about a mile over the start of the trail.  Let me tell you it is straight up 1,686 feet!  I am glad we did it, but it was a challenge, and we did make it to the top.  What I didn’t realize was the mountain is the largest confederate sculpture with connections to the KKK and white supremacy.  Learned a lot on reading about the history and while interesting, not good.  The sculpture is the largest bas-relief piece of art in the world measuring 90 feet high and 190 feet wide going 40 feet deep into the quartz mountain.  It was started in 1914 and completed in 1972 featuring three Civil War leaders.  It took three different artists 58 years to complete.  Amazing.

However, after a rest day and a day of laundry, it was time to move on.  Except we got a major downpour and because we were on a slant, water ran in, directly under our bed, and across the kitchen floor.  So that was a fun surprise to identify where it was coming in which our refrigerator vent.  Ugh.  Definitely gotta go!

Now we are sitting in Amity, Alabama on another great, cheap campsite, thank goodness.  We had been toying with buying a tandem kayak since we had ended up being near a lake and it would give us a nice change from hiking now and then.

Enter “the divorce kayak.”  Ron had found an inflatable one online, so we drove over, picked it up, and then went to try it out.

Here is what I have learned about tandem kayaks:

They are heavier than they look, longer than we anticipated, and bigger overall to store.

Ron had never threatened to hit me on the head with a paddle or divorce me until today.  Since they are impossible to steer, and he was completely frustrated.  We attempted to go in a straight line across the lake a bit didn’t get the hang of it at first.  Look at our recorded path…not straight.  Worst of all, we are planning to do it again!  We are here for 5 days.  Let’s see if we can get any better.