Off to Stone Mountain to the Confederate Memorial. There's a whole park dedicated to this.
It's $10 admission to the park, which consists of the stone monument, a museum, a grist mill, various hiking and bicycle trails, and a skyride to the top of mountain to get a closer look at the monument. An additional fee of $12 will get you a round trip on the skyride and admission into the museum.
I'm about to save you $22. You can thank me later.
Above is a photograph of the monument. It depicts Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson on horseback. It was started in 1923 by Robert Borglum, the carver who later designed and completed Mount Rushmore. (Yes, THE Mount Rushmore.) He worked on it for a year, had a disagreement with the management, and left, taking all notes and sketches with him.
A second carver, Augustus Lukeman, took on the project, but by the deadline year of 1928, he had only one figure's head completed, and was out of money. The family who owned the property reclaimed it, and no work was done on it for nearly 40 years.
Work finally began again in 1964, and this time the project was completed. If you want the entire story, follow this link.
That's it. We skipped the grist mill (seen 'em), the museum (seen those too), and since it was a Friday in winter, there wasn't anything else going on at the park. We weren't about to come back the next day and pay another $10 just in case something interesting might be happening. Besides, we were planning to take the bus into Atlanta to the Coca-Cola factory for the day.
More fun ensued. We had to find a bus stop. We had asked at the front desk of our hotel. The clerk was a nice young woman, but had no idea where (or if) the bus stopped anywhere in Stone Mountain. She sent us off down the road looking for an unmarked building. No luck. One of the local shopkeepers finally told us the bus didn't stop in that part of town any more.
Next we tried the library in Stone Mountain Village, which is outside the park/monument. The clerk thought the bus stopped on Fourth Street and that there was parking there. So Mom and I walked over. The lot was closed off. We stopped at the bank, and the teller thought the bus stopped on Second Street. There were no signs of any bus stop there.
We finally asked someone at an antique store, who very helpfully pointed out the bus stop sign two blocks up on the right -- ironically enough, a block up from the library's parking lot. In the other direction from which the clerk sent us. Okay, we were in business.
Or so we thought.
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