7:30 - Depart hotel.

            11:00 - Arrive in Clayton.  Stop here for people to get snacks if necessary to take into the park for a picnic lunch.

            11:30 - Arrive at the entrance to Black Rock Mountain State Park.  On the road leading up to the top of the mountain and the Visitor's Center, there are numerous overlooks with markers that indicate the elevation.  Stop at each overlook and note the elevation and take the temperature.

            12:15 - Arrive at the Visitor's Center and create a graph comparing temperature and elevation.  Have a brief discussion about how the temperature changed as the elevation increased and how the observed change compares to the wet and dry adiabatic lapse rate.

            12:40 - Student presentation on the climate of Georgia.

            12:45 – Go inside the Visitor’s Center and allow fifteen minutes to tour the Visitor’s Center which has information about all of the regions of Georgia.  Outside the visitor’s center there is a deck with a fantastic view from Black Rock Mountain down into the valley with the town of Clayton – allow TIG students to have lunch here.

            1:30 - Student presentation on Black Rock Mountain.

            1:40 – Begin hiking the Tennessee Rock Trail.  There are numerous stops along the way to discuss the significance of Black Rock Mountain State Park.

            4:30 – Return to the rock outcrop outside of the Visitor’s Center to discuss what type of rock this is and how it would have formed

            5:00 – Have students look across the valley to another mountain with a cleared rectangular area.  That is an area known as Hang-gliders’ Heaven.  You can almost always see Hang-gliders here.  Watch them for several minutes and have students explain, based on the topography, why this area would attract hang-gliders.

            5:30 – Return down the mountain to a hotel in Clayton

            6:00 – Dinner at a local restaurant

            7:30 - Return to the top of Black Rock Mountain to watch the sun set around 8:00.  As the sun sets, in the west, you will be able to see the constellations of Leo and Virgo; in the east, you will be able to see the constellations of Sagittarius and Hercules; in the south, you will be able to see the constellations of Scorpius and Libra and the planet Mars (Pluto is in that area, too, but can’t be seen with the naked eye or binoculars); in the north, you will be able to see the constellations of Cassiopeia and Ursa Minor. 

            9:00 – Complete a visible star estimation activity where students take a piece of paper with a 5x7 inch hole cut in it and choose an area of the sky and count how many stars they can see it it.  Then, they will determine how many of these it would take to cover the whole sky and multiply the number of stars by that number to determine approximately how many stars are visible here.  Compare that to the number they saw in Atlanta.  Discuss how and why the number differs.

            9:30 – Return to hotel