Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls State Park: A Kidless Weekend

travel dates: September 2023

More than once in the weeks leading up to our stay at the Hike Inn I described the experience to someone: “so you hike five miles through the woods and then you sleep in bunk beds and have a family style dinner with strangers…” only to be met with blank stares or responses like, “that sounds terrible.”

It’s…not for everyone.

I wasn’t entirely sure it was for me, in fact, until I tried it. Turns out it was really fun! It was, honestly, mostly the communal dinner with strangers that I wasn’t so keen on, but that turned out to be just fine, too.

The Hike Inn is in the north Georgia mountains, a five mile hike away from Amicalola Falls, and that hike is the only way to get there (under most circumstances, at least. More on the very controversial service road later!) Dave and I have wanted to give it a try for years now, but a few months ago we finally booked it, spurred into action by our realization that, with Gus leaving for college next year, we were running out of time when we could fairly easily get away for a weekend leaving Abe (and all the animals) in the care of an older brother. And we’d never done it before! We’d left Abe with Ari a couple of times to take Milo to Nashville for college, but that’s not the same as a kid-free weekend alone somewhere. Our anniversary is in August, so we declared that enough of an excuse to take off. But we didn’t want to actually do a five mile trek through the woods in August, so we found a weekend in September instead and made our reservation.

We booked it back in the spring because the Hike Inn, with only 20 double bunk rooms, fills up early, particularly on weekends and particularly particularly on fall weekends (if we’d wanted to push it a few weeks later in hopes of seeing fall leaves, we would already have been out of luck by spring). Weekdays are much easier to book. A room for two runs around $230 with tax, and that includes breakfast and dinner. So we felt the price was pretty reasonable for a unique experience like this, with the big caveat that things get much less financially feasible very quickly if you’re looking to bring a family. The rooms fit 2 adults or up to 2 adults plus one kid under 12 on a mat on the floor. You can add on that kid under 12 for a small uncharge, but if you have more than one kid or a kid over 12, you’re looking at adding a whole new room and then spending well over $400 on a one night trip. The FAQ on the website says they love and welcome kids, but there were only a handful of kids there when we went, and I suspect the way the pricing works is a big reason for that.

Our Hike Inn Reservation was for Saturday night, but we made a weekend of it by spending a night at an Airbnb in downtown Blue Ridge, GA on Friday.

I can’t remember why we didn’t just stay at the lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park. That is a thing one can do, and it’s a lovely lodge in a lovely state park with a nice restaurant and everything. And then we would have been two minutes away from the Hike Inn trailhead come morning. But, for whatever long-forgotten reason, we instead looked for an adorable mountain town to stay in Friday instead, and we settled on Blue Ridge. Which is indeed a town which is both adorable and in the mountains, but it was also about 40 minutes away from Amicalola Falls. But cute! With many restaurants and breweries! We drank beer, and ate dinner, and walked around, and the next morning we had biscuits as big as our heads at Bigfoot Biscuit Co. Saturday morning.

So it was lovely, but, in retrospect, I think I would have gone with staying at the lodge or maybe in the tiny town of Ball Ground, which is also cute and which we drove right through on our way to Blue Ridge.

But, at any rate, after our giant biscuit breakfast, we drove to Amicalola to start our hike. You’re required to check in and start hiking by two to ensure that you have enough time to get there before dinner. I knew all about that, but I failed to note the part of my e-mail where they told us they recommended getting to the parking lot before noon, particularly on weekends, to ensure we could get a spot. Between going out for breakfast and stopping by the grocery store for snacks and our 40 minute drive, we made it to the parking lot by the trailhead almost exactly at noon…and found it totally full. Boo. There are alternative places to park, but they add some extra walking on to an already pretty walking-intensive day, so we were kind of bummed. But then! Just as we had turned around and were about to leave the lot, we saw someone pulling out of a spot right across from the trailhead! Yay!

Dave is calling and leaving a message saying we’re about to start hiking. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Incidentally, you’ll also have to pay a $5 fee to enter the state park unless you have a park pass, which we don’t this year.

Ready to go!

There’s a sign at the beginning of the hike telling you that the average time to complete it is three hours. We thought maybe, what with no kids along and a summer of hiking in Newfoundland in our immediate past, we could be above average. We were not. We took almost exactly three hours to complete the hike in both directions. We stopped for snacks a lot, I guess.

Most places online rate the hike as moderate or moderate/strenuous. It’s a pretty standard east coast mountain hike: up, down, up, down, rocks and roots, through the woods with the occasional parting of the trees so you can have a view. There’s a lot of up and down (as mentioned) but overall you gain elevation (around 500 feet, according to my google sources, from around 2600 ft to 3100) on the way there, so that the way back is somewhat easier. We found the hike a workout, with several long uphill hauls, but very doable for anyone with a bit of hiking experience.

Oh! We made sure to bring our trekking poles on the trip with us, because we’d read they were good to have…and then we left them in the trunk of the car. We realized it maybe 3/4 of a mile in, when we were passed by a group of older women coming the other from the other direction, all equipped with poles. I.e. too late to turn back. I mentioned to the lead hiker in that little group that we’d forgotten ours and, instead of encouraging me that we’d be fine, she ominously pronounced, “you might need them.” Umm. So. We were fine. They would have been nice to have (and we ended up finding fallen sticks along the trail to use as substitutes), but we never felt like they were must haves.

So after walking a long way through the woods, we finally caught our first glimpse of the Hike Inn!

We went into the lobby area and were given a quick orientation: there are several buildings all connected by covered walkways–the lobby area/bunkhouse (you can charge devices here, buy merch, or sit on the couches and read from the collection of mostly nature books they have), the bathhouse, with odor-free (really!) composting toilets and hot showers, the dining room, and the “sunrise room” where you’ll find board games, puzzles, and a few more books, as well as a porch with rocking chairs for taking in the view.

We got there around 3:30, which left us an hour and a half before the daily 5 PM tour of the inn, which focuses on sustainability. We dropped our stuff in our room,  walked around a bit, got some coffee (coffee, tea, lemonade, and water are always available in the dining room) and sat on the porch for a bit. Then we took showers so we wouldn’t scare off our future dinner companions. The bathhouse is perfectly nice: the composting toilets are in separate, private rooms, and then there are men’s and women’s shower rooms with two showers each and a row of sinks. Everything was sparkling clean.

The bunk rooms are, as promised, clean and comfortable but not luxurious. We found the bunk mattresses fine to sleep on. The rooms are small, but there are thoughtful storage features, like shelves and hooks, so we had all the space we needed.

There’s a heater and a fan, but no air conditioning (I imagine that’s seldom a big problem at that elevation, particularly at night). The FAQ will tell you there’s no outlet in the room, but there actually is; the fan is plugged into one up on the ceiling, and there’s an empty spot next to it where you can plug a phone charger in or whatever (if you have someone tall with you, like Dave, or if you’re willing to climb on the bunk ladder and reach over).

So, re: phones. Apparently this is a matter of great concern for some people, as they address it extensively on the website. You’re not supposed to use phones in public areas at the Hike Inn. But they add that it’s totally fine to use your phone as a camera or a reading device; they just don’t want you to play music with no earbuds or make phone calls. So, honestly, fairly standard cell phone etiquette in public areas anyway. It was definitely not a big deal. We DID have a fairly reliable cell signal (albeit sometimes slow) while we were there, too, which was something I was mildly worried about since we were leaving the kids on their own. We confined any texting or web-browsing to our bunk room, but we saw the occasional other person using their phone quietly in public areas, and no one said anything.

Re: packing: they provide linens and towels and dispensers of shampoo/body wash in the showers, so you mostly just need to pack clothes, toothbrush, water and snacks for the trail…oh, and your trekking poles. I also brought my real camera, after much back and forth, and I was glad I did. And a note re: alcohol. The Hike Inn is affiliated with Amicalola State Park, and Georgia State Parks have a somewhat puritanical relationship with alcohol. Unless something’s changed recently, official policy is that you can’t have alcohol in the campgrounds, even inside your own RV. Obviously, this is a policy that’s difficult to enforce and that one is unlikely to be hassled about unless one is making quite a scene. What this means at the Hike Inn is that there’s a weirdly evasive policy about alcohol, which says that it’s “discouraged” and that open containers in public areas are prohibited. This is a little too bad, because a cold beer after a long hike is very nice, and I bet they could do very well for themselves offering up a fridge with a selection of local beers for sale. Also, I just checked and the concessionaire-run lodge at Amicalola State Park serves alcohol. But anyway. I can say that there was one guy there the same night as us who I never saw without a can of Guinness in his hand, and no one said a thing to him. I think I can say that this is another area (like your own campsite in a state park campground) where you should be fine as long as you’re being fairly subtle and not causing problems.

So after our self-guided wandering and our showers (and Dave finding this stick bug!)…

…it was time to meet back up in the lobby for our tour. Avery was our tour guide. He’d only been working at the Hike Inn for a week and we were his first tour, but he did a great job. He talked about the history and construction of the inn, then took us around to show us the Star Base–a rock structure that’s carefully designed so that the sun comes through it in some sort of notable and exciting way during the equinox–the compost bins, etc. I just realized that Star Base + compost bins is kind a weird juxtaposition. But it’s true that those are the main things he showed us after we went outside! There were worms! Oh, he didn’t show us the compost from the composting toilets. This was food compost.

By then it was almost time for dinner. We got there pretty early, because I was somewhat terrified that the spots would fill up and I’d not only be doing family style dinner with strangers but doing it without Dave. This actually happened to one guy at our table, who ended up with us because there wasn’t enough room for him at the table with the rest of his family. Anyway, our dinner companions were lovely and we all talked about travel and whatnot, and it was fine. We sat with the same people (minus the one guy, who found a seat with this family) again the next morning.

The food is good and pretty simple, so picky eaters (like me) don’t have much to fear. Our dinner was ham, rice, rolls, salad, and…maybe a vegetable side dish? Can’t remember. Some sort of fruity dessert. Breakfast was sausage, biscuits, gravy, and…something. I gather that they mostly rotate through around 3-4 offerings, and that all the dinners follow that meat, starch, veggies kind of template. They will prepare food for assorted dietary restrictions (vegetarian, gluten-free, etc) with advance notice. If you’re staying more than one night or want to pack a lunch for your hike back, they sell bagged lunches with a few different sandwich options.

This post is so long! But, wait: there’s more! After dinner there’s always some kind of talk at 7 (they keep you busy!) It was Avery again, telling us about his first backpacking trip a few months ago. It was very entertaining and involved a bear. There was a slideshow. And then the official programming was over and we were on our own until bedtime. Which turned out to be not much later for us, since Dave was feeling kind of run down that night.

In the mornings, if the sunrise is going to be nice, they come around and play a drum outside the bunk rooms to wake people up in time. So it’s nice if you can be there in September when the sunrise is relatively late. But no drums for us because our sunrise looked like this:

Bummer. Shortly after this, it was time for breakfast, and then time to pack up and get going.

They had someone standing outside offering to take pictures of everyone as they left. We stood in front of the caution tape to make the porch look nicer:

And then the hike back!

So…great experience, and we would definitely do it again. In fact, I think we will try to do it again fairly soon, with Abe next time. I liked the idea of trying it out without him first and sort of evaluating how I think he’d do, and I think he’d do fine. He’s interested in going, and he’s done plenty of hikes of similar length and/or difficulty before (although maybe not so much of similar length AND difficulty). There’s not a ton to do, but I think he’d have fun playing games in the sunrise room for one evening and that he’d get pretty into the tour and whatever the evening talk is. As mentioned, there weren’t a lot of other kids around, so you can’t count on your kid running off and making friends.

Oh! I almost forgot: the service road! So there’s a lot of talk on the website about how the only access to the Hike Inn is on foot. Well…sorta. There’s clearly a dirt service road. You can see it on the satellite view. Google maps will actually give you driving directions to the inn using it. My understanding is that it’s gated, so you can’t really just drive right up there…but it seems fairly clear that that’s how they get supplies up there, and it’s why accommodations are slightly less rustic than at some similar destinations (like the Leconte Lodge in NC where supplies are brought in via llama). But I was kind of curious about it and did some online sleuthing, and it turns out the service road is very controversial. I found two TripAdvisor reviews that mention it: one person is BIG MAD that the service road exists at all (“they should call it the ‘Drive Inn’!”) while the other person is instead angry that he wasn’t allowed to use the service road to have some beers pre-delivered on his behalf. Me? I’m perfectly fine that the service road is there and don’t mind I have to hike while the people bringing my food get to drive. I do think it’s a little funny how evasive they are about it on the website, though. There’s a question in the FAQ about emergencies, and the answer is pretty much just, “yeah, I dunno–pretty remote up here–don’t count on surviving!” …instead of, “if you break your ankle or something, we’ll probably just give you a ride back down to your car on the service road.”

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