Mowing would have been more relaxing but not nearly as rewarding!

Dan's typical Saturday involves mowing, weed eating, blowing, watering, hoeing, weed killing, etc.  He is all about the yard and the garden on Saturdays.  However since we have received what feels like ZERO rain in the last month, the yard didn't really need to be mowed this Saturday.  (Although looking at it now, the weeds look like they have grown a couple of inches.  In fact, I think they are waving to me right now.  Perhaps doing a victory dance because they are about to overtake what little green grass is left?)

Since Dan didn't spend his whole Saturday tending the grass of the crops we decided to head out for a family hike.  We drove about an hour and fifteen minutes until we got to Stone Mountain State Park.  We visited this park last summer with Jennifer and her family.  There are some small waterfalls that people slide down.  It's good cheap redneck fun and we had a blast doing this last year.

This time we decided to hike up the mountian and then back down and around to a 300 foot waterfall.  The hike was FIVE miles.  For the first two miles Sarah whined about being tired and wanting to be carried.  For the second two miles Peter whined about being tired and wanting to just "be done already"!  And for the last mile, I kept thinking to myself, "why did we decide to hike a trail that was FIVE miles when the kids had a sleepover the night before and were tired and cranky to being with?" 

But we made it!  Even after all the whining and sweating and hiking up and hiking down we did it! 

The views were incredible.  We kept trying to tell the kids that anything worth doing is going to be hard sometimes.  I'm not sure they picked up on the life lesson we were trying to teach them.  They were just ready to get to the ice cream we promised them from the country store near the exit of the park.  (And quite honestly, the thought of the ice cream is what got me through that last hot and mostly upward mile.)

Here are some pictures of our hike.

Here we are before the hike.  All smiles - that won't last long!

Here we are on a stone carpet about half way up.

Here we are at the top

A tree growing out of the stone.

Happy to be at the top!

This is a view of the mountain from the other side. (Clearly we didn't climb this side!) It is 2300 feet about sea level. 

The kids on one of their many rest stops!

The 300 foot waterfall.  My picture doesn't capture how tall and magnificent it is!  After I took this picture, we had to hike back UP before we could enjoy our ice cream!