When you open yourself up to life, Life opens up to you!: Don Carter State Park, Gainesville, Ga

We spent nine days at Don Carter StatePark in Gainesville, Georgia. The park is situated on the Lanier Lake in the area of Lulu. It is a relatively new park, becoming official in 2002, named to honor Don Carter who serving on the Georgia Department of Natural Resources board for 29 years, dedicated much of his work to establish Lake Lanier’s first state park.

The park is beautiful and the campground is so well laid out. Each site is either terraced or offset, meaning always a view of the trees, and/or lake without having to look through your neighbor's window. The sites spacious and many are pull throughs with availability to larger units. It is well maintained and the bathouses are clean and heated! In addition to the RV
Campground, there is a section for tent camping as well as large, two bedroom cottages. Well staffed and friendly campstore/office, always ready to answer your questions and help as they can.

Playground and Fitness!

Beach area, nature activities and kayaks rentals in season, playground and fitness areas. Speaking of the last two, the playground near the campground has the fitness equipment right next to it. Imagine kids can play and the folks can get a workout keeping an eye out easily. This makes sense!There is a large area for Equestrian Trailer Parking and miles of trails for riding.

About one foot wide trail here
and yep straight down

The biggest draw to this park at least for us, the hiking and the views. There is officially 12.5 miles of hiking trails. The individual trails are between a half mile to two miles; but the way most are laid out there are plenty of interconnections to make you hiking as long or short as you like. Putting together loops in the one area you could hike almost twelve miles! Just keep in mind you are in the mountains and some of those inclines are rather steep, as we found out, LOL. We were able to hike almost all of the trails during our stay, going between three to five miles each time. Of course, the one day we planned out our hike and saw it was a bit longer than usual adding another mile to it. Eh, whats another mile, right?!? HA well by time we got back it was probably closer to seven miles with lots and I mean lots of inclines and declines; we were DONE! But oh so worth it. The lake can be viewed from so many vantage points, each as beautiful as the next. The trails are well marked in most areas (umm if you manage to get to Whale Tale Spur Trail be vigilant in watching for those markers, lots of downed trees makes it easy to get temporarily displaced, not that we would have had that experience, hehehe) though there are areas in which the trail is very narrow, a bank on one side, and a long way down on the other. Makes for a rather intense passing.

Magical Grove of American Holly

On the trail not far from our site we went through this absolutely magical grove of Holly Trees. There were hundreds of them and we hiked right through the middle. They surrounded the trail and made like an arbor above us. Magical, Delightful, Wonderful.

A side note: One day hiking we met up with another hiker (Being off season at the park this was actually unusual, mostly we were on our own on the trails.) While stopping to check out a salamander that zip across the trail, a lovely lady Lori, caught up to us. She was hiking alone and does so regularly, pleasant to chat with we hiked together for quite a distance, Why she stands out to me is she was around our age perhaps even a little older, man was she spry. She wasted no time climbing up the steepness of certain areas, and again she has no qualms hiking alone. Smart, active, fit, intelligent, fun, yep she is of the people I will hold in my mind when a bit of inspiration is needed.

The Singing Tree

Yep We made it through
climbing over, under, and through!

Combining the more strenuous hiking with fun relaxing hikes along the shore of the lake with all the entertaining climbing in, over, through the fallen trees, was perfect. Can't forget our delightful experience I posted about early with our singing tree!! Great memories, great activities, great place, great time! I do feel this is why I tend to like State Parks over private campgrounds, better access to hiking.

On this stop we were able to meet up with friends, Wendy and Eric came by to check out our RV, then took us out to lunch for an afternoon of catching up, sharing news, lots of laughter and lots of love.

Oh another fun find, one day while scrounging around for kindling, Paul suddenly called to me. I quickly went to find out what he needed and were we both surprised to discover not twenty yards up behind our campsite; a very, old, family cemetery plot!! Certainly not what one would expect to find. The headstones so old you couldn't read them. The two that you could had the dates of 1865 and 1894. Yep, you never know what we will discover on our travels!

Usually, by the time a week rolls around we are more than ready to leave and head to the next place, but this time, no, we could have easily stayed longer. Oh, well time to move on as we slowly make our way down through Georgia.

But Oh The Views!!!