Atlanta

We really don't like big cities but we bit the bullet and took on Atlanta to see some things we really wanted to see. The closest RV park was in Stone Mountain about a mile from the Stone Mountain Park. That allowed us to check out the Stone Mountain carving the day we arrived, without doing a lot more driving.

Stone Mountain Carving

King burial

The next day we headed into the city and were surprised that we made it to our first destination pretty smoothly. Parking in Atlanta is horrendous for any vehicle much less a big truck like ours. First stop, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. They have a big, free parking lot - score. This site encompasses a few city blocks and contains a Visitor Center, a lot of information on the civil rights movement and trying times, a memorial with burial site, The King Center with exhibits containing King artifacts, a historic residential area including Kings birth home, and Ebenezer Baptist Church where Kings' grandfather and father both served as pastors. This is all a pretty impressive array of information about a great man.

MLK Nobel Peace Prize

Ebenezer Baptist Church

We left our truck parked in this wonderful parking lot and walked 1.25 miles to the State Capitol. This building was completed in 1889. It is a fairly modest building from a decoration standpoint with the one glaring (literally) exception being the gold plated dome. It was built with as many products from Georgia as possible including the marble on the interior.

After we found some lunch, we walked back to the truck and drove a mile on the Freedom Park Trail to the Carter Presidential Center. We visited the Jimmy Carter Museum which had a great film followed by a chronology of his life and accomplishments. The film talked about his life

Georgia State Capitol

and then about the Carter Center and the fantastic things it works on around the world. It's all a lot of good information about a another great man, another civil rights leader, and what he as done for people all over the world.

Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize

Exact replica of the Oval Office when Jimmy was president