United States: Georgia: Atlanta: Stone Mountain

russellviii
Layton

Worth visiting!

The Girl Got Us There

Late one afternoon, after our meetings were over, a few of us decided that we ought to try going out to see Stone Mountain. We were a group of four, two had been there before, and the others had not. It took quite a while to get there from where we were staying in Buckhead. Traffic was pretty heavy, and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of freeways between the two locations.

Luckily I had brought the girl with me. She knew how to get us there. Getting back was another issue though. (BTW, girl is a term that my traveling companions and I frequently use to mean GPS. It comes from the female-sounding voice that it uses to give directions. It’s pretty common to hear one of us ask something like, “Does your girl know if there’s a good Mexican restaurant near here?” or, “Does the girl want us to get off of the freeway at this exit, or the next one?”)

By the time we arrived at Stone Mountain, the visitor’s center, shops, and other amenities had all closed. We got out of the car and looked around a bit. Of course we were able to see the mountain itself and the enormous carving on the face of it. The area was beautiful, with its fragrant, verdant forests.

The carving on the mountain is impressive. The figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson can all be seen. The carving is decptively large. They said that the statue of Robert E. Lee was more than 90 feet high.

It is a very popular area. There were a lot of well-utilized walkways. Bicycles were everywhere. I’m sure that it would be great to live near this place.

We stopped and had an excellent meal at a German restaurant nearby and then headed back to Buckhead.

I hope to go back there again someday, especially during the daytime when everything is open.

Comments:

russellviii
Layton

It All Depends on How You Treat Your Girl

I got my girl for Christmas and have really had a lot of fun with it. There is though the tendency to pay too much attention to it while driving. I’ve found that the temptation is not so great on long trips on the highway, but sometimes around town, especially if you’re trying to use it to help you find a restaurant it can be a distraction.

The owner’s manual says that you should program your girl before you start driving, or at least pull over to do it. I usually try to do that. If I just have to hit one or two buttons, I don’t mind doing it at a stoplight. But if the girl needs a lot of attention I prefer to ask someone else to do it.

One really strange thing I’ve noticed about owning a girl is that I tend to not pay as much attention to how I arrived at a particular destination. Someone will ask me something like, “Did you get there via State Route 65, or on old Highway 73?” Then I’ll tell them that I really have no clue how I got there because I just did what the girl told me to do.

The girl isn’t perfect, but overall I’ve been pleased with it. In areas where I’m familiar with the streets I’ve notcied that it doesn’t always give me the quickest route, but the route that it does give me is accurate and is still a reasonably efficient way to get there. In areas where I don’t know where much of anything is, it’s a great thing to have with me.

It helps me find restaurants when I’m in unfamiliar cities. I can tell the girl that I want to find an Italian restaurant for example and she’ll list all of them within about a ten mile radius. Or I can just ask her what restaurants are close, and she’ll give me another list, based on distance from my location.