Fort Mountain State Park – 13

10.27.23-10.29.23

Halloween festivities and peak fall colors in the North Georgia mountains made for a perfect weekend!

The volunteer organization, Friends of Fort Mountain State Park hosted Halloween festivities the weekend before Halloween. This was their second time hosting the event at the park and hopefully it will grow each year.

The event was promoted through Facebook and the volunteers even reached out by phone to let campers with reservations know what was happening. We participated by decorating our campsite, taking our kids trick or treating, passing out candy at our site, and enjoying the hayride. The hayride was $20 per family or $5 per person. The Friends of Fort Mountain were selling refreshments and giving away s’mores packs to the kids.

We did not participate in the costume contest, but went all out with our campsite decor. Never heard who won the best site decoration contest and we were a little disappointed by that. Our kids trick or treated through both campgrounds and I estimate about half the campsites were handing out candy.

Other state parks that had great participation for the Halloween events include: FDR State Park, Tugaloo State Park, and Mistletoe State Park.

The last weekend of October was peak color for Fort Mountain State Park and we got to enjoy that throughout the weekend. We hiked to the West Overlook and down the stairs from the Fire Tower. Next trip we hope to hike from the Cool Springs Overlook to the West Overlook as we have never been on that trail. One day we will try the 8-mile Gahuti Trail.

We chose campsite 13 after staying in 15 the year before. Both are pull-thru sites with views of the woods. However, site 13 has woods to the right as well, creating more privacy. We had to level the camper on the door side. There was plenty of room for multiple vehicles on either side.

The creek behind the site 13 was not moving, so I bet the waterfall on Big Rock Nature trail was non-existent. We never ventured over there to see for ourselves. The trees by the road would have been great for hammocks, but we had all of our Halloween decor set up.

My parents rented cottage 1 for the weekend, details here. When we visited them at the cottage we left the dogs in the camper with our Marcell temperature monitoring system. Use code Imagine25 to get $25 off your purchase.

Our weekend was free with our nights that were included in the Friends of Georgia State Parks membership. The pass is worth every penny. More information about the pass here, including a discount for our followers.

Just a reminder if you have not read any of our other Fort Mountain State Park posts — there is little to no cell service in the campground (Verizon and AT&T.) Up by my parents cottage and by the trails we were able to send text messages

We ended the trip coming down the mountain of course, but it was a little more eventful than usual. Our trailer brakes were not engaging and we were forced to overuse the truck brakes. By the time we hit the bottom of the mountain we were smoking. These tin boxes are always going to need some kind of maintenance.