Amicalola Falls & Fort Mountain State Parks

Amicalola Falls State Park | Fort Mountain State Park | January 2023

Just as predicted, Sunday was a cold and rainy day. If we had already been in our next rental house, we probably would’ve just taken the day to relax, but we couldn’t check in until after 3. That gave us 8 hours to drive the 3 hours from where we were camping to there, and kill the rest of the time however we possibly could. We had a few state parks in mind to visit along the way, but were okay with taking it easy. In case I haven’t made it clear from these posts, we had been doing all this hiking and driving every single day, not really having a “rest day” since we were in Wilmington over 2 weeks prior. We were doing fine physically and still enjoying ourselves — Charlotte especially seemed to love all the extra activity — but this rainy day (and two nights of not great sleep) just made us want to stay inside and be warm and cozy.

We shuffled things around in our car and then left our campsite. We took US-19 South to Dahlonega, then headed West. Our first stop of the day was Amicalola Falls State Park. We parked near the visitor center and prepared for a wet hike, then set off on a trail that promised a loop hike to the falls. We could’ve parked in a lot much closer to the falls, but in the interest of killing time and seeing more of the park we chose this route. The beginning was mostly just a walk in the woods, things didn’t get interesting until we passed the parking lot closer to the falls and started following the cascading falls back to the waterfall.

Curtis had told me it was the highest waterfall in Georgia and was throwing around stats like it being 729 feet tall and one of the highest waterfalls East of the Mississippi, but standing at the base of the main part of the falls, I wasn’t buying it. Turns out the 729 feet includes all the cascades that we had just walked by to get here, and there isn’t a way to see the entire thing in one unobstructed view. Oh well, they’re still impressive, and one of Georgia’s seven wonders — our second for this weekend. We had planned on continuing the loop and walking up the stairs to enjoy it from other viewpoints, but the stairs turned out to be the metal grated ones that Charlotte doesn’t like, so we decided to not subject her to that. Instead, we took our time here, then drove to the top of the falls. While the view looking down was cool, there was a thick fog hiding the view beyond that. Curtis had teased hiking to Springer Mountain and the Southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, but I turned him down because that would definitely spoil it for us if we ever decided to hike the AT… Not to mention it is also 16 miles round trip and definitely not doable for today.

After we were finished here, we took GA-52, continuing our drive West. The drive might have been scenic if not for the fog obstructing every view, but it was at least a pleasant drive up onto a mountain ridge. We came to our second stop of the day, Fort Mountain State Park. We knew we wouldn’t have any view because of the clouds, but it had stopped raining for now so we set off on another loop hike to see the stone tower at the summit. Despite not having views, we enjoyed this hike and reading about the history along the way. The CCC tower at the top was closed, but it was still fun to see. The name Fort Mountain doesn’t come from any actual Forts built near here, but from some prehistoric rock mounds just below the summit that resemble a fort.

Once we were finished with our hike, it was after 1, and we were less than an hour from our rental. We decided to spend the rest of our not-driving time at Sonic for lunch, then stopped at an Aldi to pick up groceries for the week. 3:00 finally came, and we arrived at our house for the week shortly after. We had wanted to spend some time in the Chattanooga area, and had found a cheap rental house South of the city in the Georgia countryside. The house was small but very warm and had everything we needed for a week, and ended up being our favorite rental house of the trip!