Stone Mountain State Park — Attraction in Sparta

Went hiking at beautiful Stone Mountain on the Tuesday, following Memorial Day. It was the perfect day to go because there wasn't many people there so most of the time I was hiking with just me & nature. So peaceful & beautiful. The weekends & holidays Stone Mountain is pretty packed. So I suggest going during the week if you want to avoid the crowds. Wear proper footwear with a good gripping sole because you will be hiking on solid stone & crossing wet rocks at times during your hike. Take a map, if you are not familiar with Stone Mountain. You can get turned around or take a wrong trail if you don't know the mountain. Take plenty of water. Wear bug spray. I can't express this enough. I was harressed the whole hike with midges, nats, & all kinds of flying, buzzing pests, because I forgot my bug spray. There are bathrooms & water fountains atbthe start of the trails. If you are not in shape, start with an easy trail. There are maps at the beginning of the trails & will have the length of the trail & how hard it is. Start out on a easy hike & build your endurance & muscles before tackling one of the strenuous trails. There are stairs, many stairs on what I call the backside trail. It is hard. It is not for anyone that is not in shape. This trail will take you up using stairs mostly, & also hiking up the stone. There is a guide wire on this part, which helps, because this is hard. The hike to the falls is easy & short, but again there are stairs, many stairs. But it's a relatively easy trail to hike. Stone Mountain is beautiful, with breathtaking views at the summit, plus all the way to the top. I love to hike here. Being in nature is a calming balm to my soul. One last thing. If you are hiking, walking, camping, or anything else that takes you into nature or anywhere you are for that matter, leave no trace that you were there. In other words DON'T THROW YOUR TRASH ON THE GROUND. Pack out what you pack in people. There is nothing worse for me to be hiking along & see a dirty diaper just tossed in the woods. Really makes me angry. If you bring it with you, you can carry it out. I hope this review of Stone Mountain is helpful to people. It is truly beautiful there & I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to have a good hike in the woods & be one with yourself. DON'T...

We've been to a lot of state parks, and you never know what you're going to get when you try a new one. We've been pleasantly surprised, we've been disappointed. This one maybe our favorite yet. The views are SPECTACULAR. There are so many slabs of exposed rock along the trail to walk out onto and take in the horizon and eat lunch. A few notes about the trails. The view side of stone mountain trail is less strenuous than the mountain side. Also there are 209 stairs GOING UP on the mountain side coming from "LOWER TRAILHEAD PARKING" towards "STONE MOUNTAIN". So, consider whether you prefer going up or down stairs. If you want to go down them instead of us, you may want to come from the "UPPER TRAILHEAD" and work your way north. The homestead is definitely worth an hr of poking around. The park staff showed us a book that had 80 homesteads marked, would be fun to find them all. The deer are really tame so be careful driving around, they have no fear lol. The campground was just fine. We chose site #15 in A Loop. Our only complaint was that our nights were bottoming out around freezing and the showers weren't nearly hot enough. The bathroom seems warm until you get wet. There are no temp controls on the showers and the water temp was set way too low. The floors were freezing and we would have liked a hot shower after hiking all day and before crawling into our bags at night. We read a previous review about the the RV bath house being much nicer so we took a peek on the way out and were super mad we hadn't gone over there to shower so do yourself a favor and make the walk/drive over and use that one. Other than that everything was sufficient. Mary, Jackie and Michael were our staff members down at the campground and Shannon up at the visitor center were all lovely people. Thank you for all your suggestions and kindness. Another food suggestion is McGrady's, it's about 3-4 miles from the park and Rebecca was SUPER gracious and offered to make us whatever we'd like. I'll leave her a separate review but if you need...

Stone Mountain is such a great place to go for outdoor family fun because you can do so many different activities here. And it's super super beautiful. Have been going here my entire life! You can do anything from fishing (must have a license) to hiking. Camping and they even places to ride your horses. There's places to get married outside and the most amazing waterfall you can see around here. There's also lots of smaller waterfalls and areas where you go swimming! My family and I go here for all kinds of reasons. But mostly because our little one loves to play in the creeks! He even enjoys the ride through the entire park because we go get ice cream after we're done! Oh and there's even a little history museum you can go visit when you're there. I've climbed the face of Stone Mountain once when I was 25 years old. It's the most amazing experience you could have. Climbing all the way up, laying down in one of the craters & looking out over the trees, no longer seeing anything but tree tops below you, is the most amazing adrenaline rush you'll ever get. It's the most amazing view too. Truly. I've never experienced like that since. But it's super hard, not safe & very very very tiring on your legs. If I didn't have a friend with me to pull up to some of the craters, I would've never made it to the top of the face. They were just too far apart and I wasn't tall enough to get to some of them. But you guys, I'm so so serious when I tell you how amazing the view is from there. Oh sometimes you can see goats! Plus amazing foliage!! Some of my favorite flowers are in this State Park. I'm just so glad it's a place you can go by yourself to clear your head and it's also a place you can bring your family. Honestly, what more could you ask for?!

Our day in the was pics I'm sharing is from when we went up one of the creeks to skip rocks. My little man sure does love being there with his...