A couple of weeks back, we went camping in the North Carolina mountains, just north of Elkin. It's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but has a bigger WalMart than any in Wake Forest or Raleigh. Yes, I was jealous and felt a little smaller.
The first thing you notice upon coming into Stone Mountain State Park (NC) is there are a lot of deer that are easy to see. A LOT of deer. Did I mention there were a lot of deer? As long as you stay in your vehicle, they'll let you drive right up to them and take a picture. We would make it a regular habit of looking in the woods and next to the road every time we drove back into the park. Not once did we NOT see a deer. 100% deer, all the time.
But they stayed away from the campground, and just preferred to browse along the edge of the road or just in the woods and stare at passing cars. Some of the younger deer would run away (rookies!), not aware that there is no hunting in the park.
There are a lot of campsites, 89 drive in sites according to
the Stone Mountain State Park website. We camped in site #7, on a very quiet and mostly shady loop of the campground. We chose it online with their reservation system, and based on the location (using Google Earth) and the size of the site, also found on their website.
We had a BIG tent, so we had to be very selective, and this was one of 2-3 shady sites that would fit our tent. Here's a picture of our homestead for the week.
The weather for the next to last week in August was very nice, with one day with very low humidity and around 80. The rest of the days were right around 80 as well, but high humidity. It would have been a little better humidity possibly in September, but compared to the upper 90s and 100s we had in the NC Piedmont all summer, I'll take it!
You can't see Stone Mountain coming into the park, and there is only one spot in the park that you can see it without a hike in. That spot is on the north side of the mountain, along the road through the park. I've marked the approximate location on the map. You can find it where there is a small pull off with a couple of picnic tables just across the footbrige over Stone Mountain Creek.
It's also a nice spot to picnic! There is a nice waterfall just downstream, and some folks enjoy sliding over the rocks (especially the kids, the water is COLD!) into the pool below. You can also see Stone Mountain from here, if you look in the top of the background.
The park has a small Visitor's Center, which features a collection of local moths & butterflies collected over 60 years ago in this area. It was worth perusing, but there was so much to do in the park and surrounding areas that we only made it in there when we first checked in.
Stone Mountain State Park is very close to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and can easily be accessed from the park. Just take Houston Road just outside of the park gate, and head up the US 21. Take US 21 North, and you'll be there in about 10 minutes, maybe 15-20 minutes from the park gate. There are a TON of outdoor opportunities in this area, and all kinds of hikes and parks to visit.
I'll post more on our adventures of this beautiful park and the surrounding area in some of my upcoming blog posts. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone that loves the mountains!
(NOTE: To see any of the images in full size, right click on the image and click "See Image". You can enlarge them by hitting the "control" key and the "+" key at the same time.)
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