A Weekend in Macon, Georgia with Kids and Teens

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When we’re visiting a new place, I like to spend a lot of time online (some would say too much) finding the very best things to do there, with an emphasis, if possible, on hidden gem type things that might not make the TripAdvisor top 10. And this is how the 64 foot concrete slide in Coleman Hill Park came to be one of our favorite things from our weekend trip to Macon, Georgia a few weeks ago.

This came right after a disappointing attempt to explore Macon by bike and really redeemed what turned out to be a very fun day.

So let me back up. I’m a broken record and all that, I realize, but lately it’s nearly impossible for us to get weekend trips in during the school year. There are clarinet lessons, baseball games, youth orchestra, math tournaments (those are Dave), and on and on…we’ve come fairly close to giving up and just focusing on school break times. But sometimes we still just have to try.

So we picked a weekend when there was no youth orchestra for Milo and Gus. Dave had some personal days, so he decided to take Monday off. We’d never been to Macon before, it was close, and we’d heard good things about the campground at Lake Tobesofkee, so that was all set.

Then we got to thinking about Atlanta traffic on Friday evenings and decided to leave Saturday morning instead. Right after Milo’s 9:00 clarinet lesson! Then Dave realized there was a math tournament on Saturday. We had been planning for Abe to miss his baseball game, but there wasn’t any reason to since we couldn’t leave until after the math tournament anyway….and this is why we hardly ever take weekend trips anymore!

But we still managed to get to Macon before dinnertime on Saturday and had a whole day and a half to check out Macon before rushing back on Monday for the kids’ piano lessons (which we were late for. Because Atlanta traffic again).

The dogs were happy to be back on the road:

Claystone Campground at Lake Tobesofkee

I’d had this campground on my list for quite awhile, and it was definitely a good one:

This is a county-run park, right on the lake, as you can see, so great for boating or swimming. Sites 40-45 are full hookup pull-throughs close to the water, with concrete pads. We had site 45, and it was very nice–end of the row, so lots of privacy, unobstructed lake view.

Site 44, on the other hand, right next to ours, was a little wacky because the sewer connection was on the wrong side of the site (i.e. to use it you have to run the sewer hose under your RV), and also had a lot less room since it was right next to our site. I’m not sure about the other full hook-up sites–the others are in the row right behind where ours was, and I know at least the couple of them that I could see had a more standard sewer set up…but worth checking to make sure when you call to reserve.

The rest of the sites are water and electric, and most of them are back in sites and in a more wooded area. There’s a big range in size for those sites, and a big range in how level they are….i.e. a lot of them are not at all level. We paid $25/night for our full hook-up site; not sure how much the W/E sites are. It’s about 20 minutes from downtown Macon, so a great spot for checking out the area (though I think it’s most popular with locals looking to get out on the lake). No online booking that we could find; you’ll need to call to make a reservation (and they can be a little tricky to get on the phone). It was not at all crowded when we were there, on a weekend in late September.

This frog was very fond of our trailer and spent much of the weekend nestled in the handle next to our door:

After we got set up on Saturday, we drove into downtown and ate at the very good (and very reasonably priced) Rookery. The Rookery is big on celebrating Macon’s history through food, so you can order burgers that honor The Allman Brothers Band, James Brown, or maybe the Jimmy Carter burger with peanut butter and bacon (Milo got this one).

We really liked downtown Macon–lots of activity on Saturday night and lots of nice looking restaurants.

A Failed Attempt at Biking

I’d read that Macon has a nice bike path–the Ocmulgee Heritage Trail–that winds through the city and goes past a lot of the sites, so we brought our bikes along with the intention of checking out said bike path. But trying to figure out where to bike was a frustrating experience. I’d tried to get an idea online but eventually gave up and decided we’d just figure it out on the fly somehow or other. Sunday morning we loaded the bikes up and headed to Amerson River Park. Then we got there and squinted at a map we found for awhile and….couldn’t really understand what was going on, bike path-wise. There are bike paths there, but it was unclear to us whether they actually went somewhere or just kind of circled around the park for a mile or two. We wanted the going somewhere kind of bike path, so we headed to stop #2: Riverside Cemetery. Here we found the bike path and a map of the bike path. We squinted at this map for awhile and….couldn’t really figure it out, either. But the bike path was right there, so surely it went somewhere, right?! We unloaded the bikes and headed off through the cemetery. Very quickly, the path started to head steeply downhill. We stuck with it for….maybe half a mile? three quarters of a mile? until it abruptly ended at the edge of the cemetery. We could see where it looks like they might eventually be adding more bike path, but for now it’s just a dead end. So we turned around and went back up the very steep hill and gave up.

Cemeteries

We parked the bikes and decided to explore the historic cemeteries on foot instead.

There are a few cemeteries that are all adjacent to each other. Oak Ridge Cemetery is an African-American cemetery that was established in 1851. There are markers as you go through telling you about the history of the site.

Rose Hill Cemetery is right next door and the big draw here is that it’s where Duane Allman, Gregg Allman, and Berry Oakley are buried. We set off to find the graves, but it was hot and the cemetery was hilly, and Abe was grumpy, so it wasn’t the most serene journey:

But we made it! The graves are behind a fence to protect them from overzealous fans:

Coleman Hill Park Concrete Slide

And then the slide! I believe the hill here is the highest point in Macon, and someone had the great idea a few years ago to take advantage of the location by putting a giant concrete slide into the side of the hill.

I had read beforehand that it’s a good idea to slide down on cardboard and that there’s pretty much always a bunch of cardboard lying around already by the slides. We found both of these things to be true.

There is plenty of opportunity to hurt yourself on the slides, although probably not particularly seriously–more on the level of scraped up arms. Still, Abe felt most comfortable going down in Dave’s lap:

Other than the slide, there’s a stage area in the park that my kids might well have used to put on a production had the day been less hot, and there are some good trees for climbing. But we made a few runs and then headed back to the trailer for lunch, for we had after lunch plans at the….

Museum of Arts and Sciences

I had it in my head that the Museum of Arts and Sciences was an ASTC member museum, so that we’d get in free. And maybe it used to be, but it’s not anymore. But the admission price was a reasonable $10 for adults and $5 for kids up to 17.

Much of this museum is your typical small science museum, with a lot of the usual suspects for exhibits. Like fossil digging!

There was also this spinny thing, only it didn’t really spin when Abe did it, and we couldn’t get the big kids to try it:

We watched a live animal show, featuring this bird:

One standout was the giant claw machine:

And the small live animal area was a hit. There’s a hedgehog!

And, as the name implies, it’s also an art museum, with a small exhibit gallery:

So definitely a great place for a rainy day or–in our case–a very hot one. We did brave the heat to check out the short trail just outside:

Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park

This was probably the number one draw for us in Macon. A National Park Service site less than two hours away that we’ve never been to?!

The site has been occupied by humans continuously for 17,000 years. The mounds here were built by members of the Mississippian culture around 1000 years ago; you can visit other Mississippian mound sites all over the southeast and midwest (like the Etowah mounds in North Georgia).

We went here on Monday morning before we drove home, so we didn’t have tons of time…but it’s a pretty small site, so we were able to see a lot.

It was going to be another very hot day, so we started off checking out the trails and outdoor areas before the heat kicked in. Just behind the visitors center you’ll find the Earth Lodge, which you can actually go inside. It is, they say, the oldest restored building in the United States.

You can either walk or drive out to the Great Temple Mound; if you’re up for the walk you’ll see a lot on the way, including these railroad tracks, the construction of which caused one of the mounds to be destroyed. We timed things well enough to be there exactly as a train was passing by: