2-23-07 Adventures in Atlanta and hiking up Stone Mountain

We were busy today. We started out at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta, Georgia. King was born in 1929 in a home on Auburn Avenue. The home and the neighborhood around it are now owned by the Park Service. We toured the home, Ebenezer Baptist Church (where he and his brother were co-pastors, his father and grandfather were pastors), Fire Station No. 6 (a museum that tells about the desegregation of Atlanta’s Fire Department), and Dr. and Mrs. Kings’ Tomb at the Coretta Scott King Center. Ex-slaves started this community after the Civil War and blacks prospered there. King’s grandfather purchased the family home in 1909. By 1929 when King Jr. was born the community had banks, insurance companies, real estate agencies, medical and law offices, a library, and a business college…all black owned or black operated. This tight community with blacks of wealth living together with black workers was a huge influence on King. The area was a symbol of prosperity for African Americans. Outside the community of course everything would have been segregated. The area isn’t so prosperous today. Except for what the park service owns it’s a bit run down.

We met a lovely woman at the church named Shirley. She was raised just down the street from the Kings and now works as the historian at Ebenezer Baptist Church. She had great stories. We were starving after chatting with her so we asked for a recommendation for a restaurant and she sent us to “Thelmas”—she says “four blocks down, real Southern cooking”. Perfect. We go walking down…feeling a bit pale for the neighborhood. We REALLY looked like tourists. You have to be adventurous to try eating at Thelmas… it’s a little, run-down shack, practically under I-75. Lots of men asking us for spare change. We stuck out of the crowd for sure. Gene had ribs, sweet potatoes, cornbread, and black-eyed peas. I had fried chicken (the specialty), sweet potatoes, and collard greens. We really enjoyed it, and I think the other diners got a kick out of us! We still aren’t hungry for dinner and it’s nearly 9:00…must have been a LOT of fat in that meal!

Our next stop was “the World of Coke”…Coca Cola was invented and is still manufactured in Atlanta. We thought the “fountain that shoots Coke to your glass from 20 feet away” sounded interesting so we gave it a try. It costs $9 each to get it! We couldn’t stand to pay to see their advertising so we walked right back out.

On to the Carter Library. The gardens and flowers were gorgeous but we didn’t have enough time to see all the exhibits so we saved it for tomorrow.

We are camped at Stone Mountain Campground, about 15 miles from downtown. We had left Elsie and the motorhome there. The campground is at the foot of the strangest mountain…it’s the largest, exposed, solid granite rock in the world. It’s just sitting there like a big potato. They’ve carved a drawing of President Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson into the side of it. The rock itself is five miles around, and has a 1 ½ mile hike up to the top. We parked the car and hiked up to the top as fast as we could to see the sunset. Got a bit dark on the way back down, but the sunset was worth it!