Red Top Mountain & Allatoona Lake

As if foreshadowing of things to come for Gretchen and I, we took advantage of a little free time and disappeared together for a weekend with just the two of us.  To put another "check" on our Yurts of Georgia State Parks, our destination was Red Top Mountain State Park where we stayed at "the" yurt – they only have one. We arrived on Friday night and were able to get checked-in before nightfall.

We quickly realized this yurt (again, the ONLY one at Red Top Mtn SP) was a bit smaller than the other Yurts of Georgia State Parks.  Fortunately, plenty of room for just the two of us.

This SP is a godsend as it is a massive dose of mother nature and it sits less than an hour from Atlanta.  The whole park is a big peninsula that is surrounded by Allatoona Lake (which itself is part of The Etowah River).  The view from our deck was awesome!

We wandered down to the waterfront and got another great view as the evening was winding down.

Those rocks from earlier looked pretty cool heading back up to the yurt, too.

We made a campfire, roasted hot dogs and melted marshmallows to make s'mores before winding it down for the evening.  On Saturday, Gretchen suggested we rent a boat (OK... she was suggesting it all week).  My cheap-skate mindset was getting the best of me until she reminded me how much I spend on my Canoes & Kayaks and then we headed over to Park Marina (they are located in the SP) where we rented an 18' Bayliner for half of the day.    I'm so glad she was persistent on this as the area all around the SP is completely free of houses and there was only a few other boats out on the lake with us which offered us some awesome views.

We found a secluded cover where we anchored and went swimming for a long while.  As I mentioned at the top of this post, this whole trip is preparing us for the times ahead.  Yep, we're staring down the whole "empty nest" path and while I'd do ANYTHING for my kids, I'm also excited for Gretchen and I to start focusing heavily on ourselves, too.  Life is great my friends!!

Before our time ran out, we drove under the bridge that we drove in on and then went down to the cove where our yurt sits above.

What's that?  You don't see our yurt in the picture above?  Don't worry, we couldn't see it either, but I promise it is up there!

The final thing to check out on the lake was the Allatoona Dam which (just on the other side of the picture below) was where my Two Brothers Knocking Out Two Sections of the Etowah River kayaking trip departed from on the previous weekend. 

Speaking of Canoes & Kayaks, I bought a copy of Canoeing & Kayaking Georgia when we had to go back to the check-in station after we realized we left the campground gate code back in the yurt.  I noodled over the book for a bit while relaxing back at our campsite and found a number of trips that looked like a lot of fun.

We finished up our last night preparing hearty foil pouches and christening our new dutch oven with the obligatory peach cobbler.  DELICIOUS!!

All in all, we had a great trip and I'm so glad we ducked out, even if not too far, of town for some time together connecting on a personal level and enjoying the beauty of nature.  I'm so fired up, I'm going to go book reservations at the last two of the Yurts of Georgia State Parks that I have not visited!!