Two Waterfalls

I have visited Stone Mountain State Park in North Carolina more times than I care to recall. It's a very nice park. Large, with lots of great forests, trails, and wonderful scenery. However, it's also a very heavily visited park so that on holidays and weekends there is no way at all that you can find any solitude. On such days the park is just much too crowded for that.

This was the case when we arrived in the park on Sunday for a picnic and hike.

Things were okay when we first got there. The park already had a lot of visitors before lunchtime, but we had no trouble at all landing a decent picnic table and grill. Soon after, though, huge numbers of visitors arrived and the park became quite the traffic jam. Any chance of viewing wildlife was gone. Normally you can see lots of white tailed deer in the park, but there were so many people around that even the deer retreated to the farthest reaches of the forest. Bird life took wing and went elsewhere, and even the squirrels found refuge in the trees, away from the babbling humans.

When Carole plans a picnic, there's a theme to it. This one was, of course, Halloween. Special tablecloth, orange cups, etc. She plans even the simplest things!

Whoa! Look at the flames!

Falls colors seemed to be at their peak.

Park picnic shelter.

Me and Carole and Faye sit down for lunch before I go hiking.

At the top of Stone Mountain Falls (aka Upper Falls). This one is always crowded on holidays and weekends because you can get to the top of the falls with minimal physical effort.

The stairs leading down. Hundreds of them. The lard-asses tend to stop here.

More details about the hike tomorrow...