Wednesday, May 11

We’ve had a beautiful camping spot on Lake Lanier the past few days. It’s the type of campsite that is impossible to reserve in the heart of summer, I’m sure — directly on the water, and at the end of a peninsula so there’s hardly any vehicle traffic. It’s called Sawnee Campground just a few minutes from Cumming, Georgia which is the best of both worlds! Being right on the water and so close to nature, yet only minutes away from every retail store and restaurant you could imagine.

This afternoon, Tory, Aden and I went for a hike at Sawnee Mountain preserve. The weather has been so gorgeous this week — 80 & sunny everyday without a cloud in the sky — I’ve been itching to get outside and explore. I researched a moderate 4-mile hike that I thought the three of us could manage. I am terrible with directions, so I checked the map about a million times to make sure I knew where we were going.

The Indian Seats trail gets its name from actual “seats” carved into the granite stone at the top of the mountain overlook. Many, many years ago, the Cherokee inhabited what is now the present-day city of Cumming and it is believed the natural clearing at the top of the mountain was admired even then. This is one of the most popular hikes in the Cumming area, so even if we did get lost I figured we wouldn’t be stranded in the woods alone.

Aden was not at all interested in walking in the woods and did a fair amount of complaining during the first 30 minutes of our hike. I was proud of Tory for her maturity — she never once complained, even though I know hiking is not her favorite thing to do either.

By the time we reached the Indian Seats overlook, both kids were happy campers and we all admired the gorgeous view of the North Georgia mountains in the distance.

As a post-hike treat, I promised Tory and Aden we’d stop at Five Below. We aren’t used to having so many retail stores close by, so shopping this week has been a treat in and of itself. It took Tory and Aden at least 20 minutes to figure out what to buy with their prize money.