Surround Yourself with Nature in Georgia’s Only Backcountry Inn

3 days/2 nights at Len Foote Hike Inn

About the Trip

The incredible trip is a two night’s stay at the Len Foote Hike Inn, including a family-style dinner and breakfast for two adults. Guests hike five miles from Amicalola Falls State Park in Dawsonville, Georgia, to experience the LEED certified inn, its educational evening programs and daily facilities tour.

Includes: accommodation, breakfast and dinner, guided tours and taxes.

Awards:

- Bronze Level for Georgia’s P2AD (Pollution Prevention Assistance Division), 2008

- Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Gold accreditation for an Existing Building, 2004

Certification:

- LEED Gold Award for an Exisiting Building, 2004

- Backyard Wildlife Habitat Certification, The National Wildlife Federation

About the Organization

The Len Foote Hike Inn at Amicalola Falls State Park is one of the newest and most unique of Georgia’s state park facilities. If you enjoy wilderness hiking but prefer a soft bed, hot showers, and great food instead of camping, the Hike Inn is for you.

The Inn is accessible only by foot over a moderate 5 mile hiking trail which originates at the top of the Amicalola Falls. Check in at the Park Visitors Center to get vital information and directions for your walk to the Hike Inn. After arrival at the Hike Inn, you can settle in and begin exploring. Cold and hot drinks are available in the dining room. In the cooler months, enjoy wood-burning stoves in the common areas.

Dinner and breakfast are served family style. Educational and entertaining programs are conducted in the Sunrise Room after dinner most evenings. Programs consist of everything from worm composting to storytelling. Books and games are also available. The Sunrise Room (as you would expect from the name!) is an excellent place to observe the sunrise in the morning.

On the trip back, you may opt to complete a hiking loop by returning via the Appalachian Trail Approach Trail. The Hike Inn is one mile from the Approach Trail. If staying more than one day, you may also choose to hike to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, about 4.5 miles from the Inn, or hike on one of the short trails around the Inn.

Green Practices

The Hike Inn uses five composting toilet systems, instead of regular flush toilets. Composting toilets are odor-free and use very little water. Our composting toilets work similarly to an active leaf pile in your backyard. Humans have natural intestinal flora that end up providing the bacterial base that composts the waste. Rooftop fans circulate fresh oxygen through the systems to keep them odor-free. 90% of human waste is simply water, so the rooftop fan also helps evaporate moisture, and keep the level of waste at a manageable level. The Hike Inn saves about 200,000 gallons of valuable drinking water every year by using these systems.

The Hike Inn’s solar panels produce around 30% of the Hike Inn’s total electricity. In 2002, the Hike Inn installed 24 donated photovoltaic (PV) solar panels on the southern side of the roof of the Sunrise Room. The donation of the panels was arranged by a Hike Inn volunteer, Richard Judy, formerly of BP, as part of BP Solar’s Helios Project. Big Frog Mountain, Southface Energy Institute, Georgia DNR, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roof Program together provided assistance, materials, and installation services.

The Hike Inn has one rain barrel, which helps to provide water for our butterfly garden and other native plants and trees. The barrel is actually a recycled 55-gallon banana pepper jug, which is covered by a fine screen to prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs in the standing water. The water is not needed for potable water, so we do not purify it.

The rain water is collected from the roof, where a chain hanging from the gutter conducts the water into the barrel. The barrel is connected by PVC pipe to an antique hand pump, which we can fill our watering cans with, or hook up a garden hose to. Harvesting rain water at home helps divert polluted stormwater runoff from our creeks and rivers. Rain water can be used for watering lawns & gardens, washing the car, and cleaning decks and sidewalks.

Instead of sending all of our organic waste to a landfill, the Hike Inn recycles its organic waste back into soil using red wiggler worm beds. Red wiggler worms can eat half their body weight a day in organic material, and produce about as many worm castings, an excellent (and expensive) organic fertilizer. The Hike Inn’s worm beds hold about 40-50 pounds of worms, and all our organic waste, from our kitchen and our office, is composted with ease. From February 2003 to July 2005, the worms ate over 2000 pounds of our organic waste!

Learn more about Len Foote Hike Inn