This weekend Brenda and I decided to head up into the north Georgia mountains and go proper camping – something we haven’t done in a long, long time.   This weekend is the official end of summer and we wanted to get in one session before the weather turned.  It’s a 2.5 hour drive from our house.

Black Rock Mountain is the highest elevation park in Georgia – nestled up close to the North Carolina border with an altitude of about 3500 feet.  We had great weather – highs in the low 70s and lows in the low 60s.  It was raining some when we first arrived, but by the time we got our camp set up it had stopped and we had wonderful weather for the 2 nights we stayed on the mountain.

Of course the dog came, too.  He had plenty of room to roam and no end of things to sniff and pee on.

Our tent – we purchased this more than 10 years ago when the five of us made our road trip through Scotland.. we had thought we might camp at times in Scotland but, in the end, we stayed in AirBnB’s pretty much the entire time we were in the UK.  This was the first official time the tent was ever used.. a six-man tent, which is perfectly sized for the 2 of us + dog.  It’s tall enough to stand upright in and there was plenty of room to spread out and have all of your gear splayed out desultorily.
No sleeping bags needed, but we did use mattresses and some blankets brought from home.

Dinner while “roughing it”.

This time of year, the daylight is getting shorter.  There was a lot of time spent staring at the fire in the evening and early in the morning.

On the second night we were visited by a bear.  Brenda was out of the tent around 1:00am doing what comes naturally in the woods when she was greeted by a set of eyes reflecting back from her head mounted lamp.
She hot footed it back to the tent woke me up and we then sat upright secure with the knowledge that the 1mm of tent fabric would protect us from any possible invader.
The park made it clear that bears were “a problem” this year and warned us by email and at the ranger station before setting up.  Each site had its own “bear box” where we would store all of our food.  There have been exactly 0 problems between bears and campers this year – they’re quite shy and non aggressive when possible, but that’s small consolation in the middle of a very dark and secluded night.
I fell back asleep and Brenda stayed up listening to me snore accompanied by every amplified noise coming from the woods.  Winston is a terrible guard dog; when he wasn’t ignoring the noise he was positioning himself between us and the noises.

View of the nearby hills as the sun rises the next morning.

Breakfast!  Brenda would start each meal by frying up some bacon both for a treat and to use the grease to cook everything else..

Winston ready for the next big adventure we have planned.

We did make a 2+ hour hike to the summit of the mountain.

Proof of reaching the top.  These elevations are a joke to those in the west, but this is pretty heady altitude for the south.