The morning of day two was foggy. Foggy like “The Mist”, foggy. I also forgot to mention that it rained quite a bit during our first night with great thunderstorms, but we stayed cozy, dry, and comfy in the teardrop. Seriously, if you enjoy camping but hate having to deal with the cold, the wet, and the instability of air mattresses, this thing is worth saving up for. Everything has a place to be stored away and even as it started to rain we simply had to close everything up and climb inside.
So again, day two started out with a short, but foggy drive to Pilot Mountain State Park. We knew that this park offered a hiking trail to the top, but after having almost died (joking) from our hike the day before, we instead opted to drive to the parking lot at the top walk from there. The drive up from the visitor’s center was pretty windy and although we were able to drive up with our teardrop, we wouldn’t recommend attempting to take a 5th wheel or anything larger up this road. However, the parking lot at the top is huge, so parking wasn’t a problem at all. Due to it still being so foggy we weren’t able to see much of anything from the top aside from huge walls of gray fog we walked around for a short while before trekking on to Stone Mountain State Park.
Up to this point, Stone Mountain State Park is probably my favorite of all the state parks I’ve been to. The visitor’s center is great. They have amazing displays of the history of the area to include the families that lived in the area, the ways they worked the land, their moonshine stills, homemade displays of butterflies, and a quilting loom. The campground then is very open with plenty of sites for tent campers to huge RVs. Even though there were quite a few of the spots filled at this campground, all of the sites seemed very secluded. We were lucky enough to have a site that opened up into a huge, slopping, grassy field at the back of our site that all of the other sites seemed to be blocked by larger plants. Since we were spending two days at this park we spent the first afternoon exploring the field, kicking a soccer ball, throwing a tennis ball back and forth with our Velcro mitts and spending some time reading. And again, we ended the day with more rain, but were able to stay very dry.
The next morning we started out around 9:30, unhitched the truck from the teardrop and drove down to the trailhead at the upper parking lot to begin our hike to the summit of Stone Mountain. (We sure didn’t want to repeat our hike back to the campground after a long hike to a summit). This trail, from the upper lot, is a looped trail to the summit allowing you to go in either direction and then loop back to the starting point. We had spoken with a guy at the visitor’s center that told us that either way we would encounter quite a few steep steps, but that direction A was probably a bit easier. Of course, we decided to go with direction B, because apparently, we don’t do things the easy way. The beginning of the trail was very nice and we quickly encountered the first set of steps the man mentioned as they plummeted down to the bottom of Stone Mountain Falls. As we reach the bottom of the falls we were both thankful that we wouldn’t have to walk back up all of those stairs. We spent some time wading in the pools at the bottom of the falls and then set out to the Hutchinson’s home place, which is an old family homestead settled sometime in the 1800’s right at the base of Stone Mountain. Will and I spent a good while sitting on a bench overlooking a mountain meadow that seemed to run on in waves beneath the giant stone above.
After exploring the homestead we continued our venture towards the summit. At this point, the trail began to climb upwards. We walked for quite a while on a pretty steep trail, before reaching the steps that climbed and climbed and climbed like we were facing a walk into Mordor. These steps then turned into open rocks with poles and wire to guide you along and upwards. Then more stairs, then more rocks, more stairs, more rocks, more stairs. With so many rock openings I began to wonder if we had missed the summit and were just gonna keep walking until we made it all the back down, but I just kept following Will and hoping that he would know what we were doing. And of course, he did because we finally made it to the top where a massive rock landing greeted our arrival. We both found a divot, perfect for sitting and resting, and again took in all that there was to see. Neither of us took a chance to snap a photo, and I hate that I can’t show you because words just don’t do it justice, so maybe this is another invitation to just go see for yourself.
Do you remember how we chose direction B and how we were soooo thankful about not having to walk back up all those stairs leading down to the waterfall? That was a mistake. Those stairs to the waterfall were like walking up the stairs in your house compared to the stairs we walked up to Mt. Doom by taking direction B. The walk back down (which would’ve been our walk up) was like a gently sloping, winding hill. For perspective, it took us 3.5 hours to get to the top (maybe 3 if you don’t count the time we spent at the waterfall or the homestead) and not even an entire hour to get down. But again, we made it, and we’re proud of doing it the way we did. Not to mention, those exhausted sleeps are some of the best sleeps. Especially when it’s raining. Again.
Also, I just need to mention that the field behind our campsite led to us seeing a family of wild turkeys wandering through. We had seen the dad the day before, but this night we saw the dad, the mom, and eight little nuggets making their way across the meadow. Hopefully, we can add photos of that later as well. It’s hard surprisingly hard to keep up with an internet blog when you’ve not got any access to the internet. Who knows when we will manage to write updates again. Stick with us!
Life in the right lane,
Rachel
DMG Exploration 