The Almost Intrepid Adventures of LibraryAnn: Return to the Stone Mountain

The Stone Mountain

We had a birthday party camping at Stone Mountain a couple of years ago and Jessie has been wanting to go back. The campground there is one of the newer North Carolina State Park campgrounds and actually has electricity AND water at each campsite along with nice concrete pads and generous, level platforms for picnic tables and additional tents. I have been camping with Jessie's dog, Franklin, and I've been camping with my dog, Odie, but this was our first trip with both pooches sharing a space. They both, of course, expect to be the center of attention, so there was a little jockeying for space and pats, but in the end, we all managed a good time.

The Stone mountain itself, according to the state park website, is a 600 foot dome of igneous rock formed from molten lava during an early geologic age. Softer rock on top of it has weathered away, exposing the dome

Top of the waterfall

and the wet weather springs that continue to erode the surface, which result in a number of dramatic waterfalls. One historic marker noted that there was an attempt to mine the granite, but the miners found the rock so hard, the operation was abandoned.

Jessie and I hiked to the top of one of the waterfalls (Jessie, having made the mistake of starting the trail from the bottom end on a previous trip, exercised good planning--we left a car at the bottom and drove to the top and hiked DOWN some 300 steps that ran alongside the waterfall) and enjoyed the deep woods and dramatic falls on an extensive staircase running downhill beside the falls.

We stopped counting at 300

The days were cooler than the week before but the humidity was epic. The campground existed in a mist and the woods were dank. However, literally thousands of species of mushrooms are found in the North Carolina Mountains and conditions were perfect for them to put on a show. Jessie decided to photograph each different type she saw and it seemed like she was stopping every other step--a walking pace that suited me just fine in the thick air.

So we hiked past the Hutchinson Homeplace with it's sturdy log cabin and generous barn, abandoned in 1945 but preserved by the park. We enjoyed an evening bonfire and S'Mores. We watched the Full Corn Moon rise and slept cozy

Misty campground

in our (air conditioned) bunks. We felt safe and appropriately isolated, and it felt great to be on the road again. In some respects, it's now pretty late in the camping season, but Escapes are designed as a year round camper in Canada. I plan to test their claims with some November and December camping near home this year. Stay tuned.