Stone Mountain Climb and Laser Show
July 27, 2018
We drove to Stone Mountain and settled Brenda with the chairs on the grassy area called the "Laser Lawn" where we would watch the laser show later. We headed up the mountain, the lower level being mostly through broken rock. |  |
 | As we got further up, we were on smoother, solid rock. |
The five of them took a side branch to look off the mountain. Those side trips allowed the old man to catch up. We all made it to the top, but I was puffing, and my 79 years were telling on me. I just haven't been walking enough lately. |  |
 | We made it to the top! But Jordan hangs on to the edge! |
You do feel like you are on top of the world. This is one big hunk of granite! |  |
This selfie location gives a good impression of the height of the rock and a view to the northeast of Stone Mountain.
This is a view of the solid rock top of Stone Mountain. The area that is fairly flat at the top is four or five times the size of what you see here. I took note of the yellow flowers because they are bitterweed, a plant that gave us a lot of grief on our farm in Arkansas because it gave a bitter taste to the milk of the cows.
The family that climbed Stone Mountain together: Elyse, Ashleigh, Jordan, Darla and Jeff.
Elyse, Jordan and Ashleigh with Granddad Rod. We visited the top station with its collection of pictures and snackbar, and played around on top of the rock for a while. Then Jeff and Ashleigh started walking down while I joined Darla, Jordan and Elyse on the cablecar to the bottom. The bottom station was very close to the laser lawn from which we would view the laser show.
 | We got a closer view of the carving on the way down as well as views of the lakes and the laser lawn. As we tipped over the edge and started down on the long cable, we could see the viewing lawn where Brenda was waiting for us. That lawn was directed toward the carving on the mountain. |
| We also got a good view of the Stone Mountain lake as we descended. |  |
 | The point of passing of the upward-bound cable car gives a good perspective of the system. |
| Elyse, Jordan and Darla as we had made the short walk from the cablecar terminal to the grassy area. There we found where Brenda was sitting with a good view of the carving. |  |
We certainly got a clear view of the carving from this grassy viewing area.
From the grassy area we got good views of the relative sizes of the carving, the cable cars and the mountain. This was still a couple of hours from the laser show time, so many more people came in later. We had plenty of time for our picnic supper there. |  |
 | I liked the view of the cable car as it passed the little clump of trees that was clinging to the side of this big granite dome. |
The track for the Stone Mountain Railway ran across the bottom of the viewing area, so we saw it go by about three times. |  |
 | By 8:30pm the crowd had increased dramatically and we were still an hour away from the start of the laser show. |
At 9:30pm they started the laser show with all kinds of images traced out by the lasers as well as projected images. This is a composite of two images as they played familiar songs like "Georgia" correlated with the images. I found that I had to lower the shutter speed to 1/30 sec to get full images. |  |
 | This is a composite of three snapshots of their moving laser outlines of the Stone Mountain carving image. You can see that one of them has the three horsemen galloping across the face of the rock. |
And while we are into composite images, what about a composite of the moon rising? I was a bit distracted from the laser show by the beauty of the moon rising over the trees. No way you can really capture the beauty of that! |  |
 | They also put in some fireworks and some bright vertical columns of flame. |
I liked it when the fireworks illuminated the carving so that you could see both. |  |
 | This shows the luminous trails left by the fireworks burst above. |
This was my favorite of the fireworks illumination of the Stone Mountain carving. |  |
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Index
2018 |
