Mountain Bridge Wilderness

Andy, Carole and I took a brief trip to Jones Gap State Park. We had a picnic, played in the creek, and I went for a short walk in the woods, exploring the Mountain Bridge Wilderness. It's not that far from home and relatively isolated. As soon as I walked into the forest I left all of the people behind. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were no other people in the woods and I seemed to have the whole place to myself. I saw wildlife (a whitetail doe and a wild turkey hen). I got one fair photo of the doe but the turkey would not cooperate and I was unable to get a photo.

It was my second trip to the park. I'd like to go back when I can hike into the wilderness and spend a night and a couple of days exploring the place.

We found a nice picnic table by the creek.

The park office and store. Very nice!

Sunlight through the trees.

Not a very good picture, but the best one I could manage. I always am pleased when I see any animal in a wilderness where they are not accustomed to rubbing elbows with humans.

I liked the weird geometry of this tree and boulder.

A vast slide on the very steep slopes of the mountain.

Tomorrow I will have video of the park.

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...