North Carolina - Day 7 - in Stone Mountain campground

Stone Mountain State Park, Roaring Gap

Wednesday, 5 July 2023

I'd heard that Stone Mountain was a prominent landmark on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains and it sounded interesting, which is why I'd booked our reservations here - that plus I'd actually managed to find a campsite available here on July 4th (yesterday).  But sadly, I was never able to see the mountain so can't tell you what it looked like except from its pictures online.

Stone Mountain

It's described as an exposed granite dome more than 600' tall.  The summit lies at 2,305' elevation.  Note how much lower these eastern mountains are than those in, say, Colorado.  Scientists say it's because these eastern mountains are significantly older than the western ones and have been worn down by time.  This particular hunk of granite is from an era dating between 419.2 to 358.9 million years ago; compared to the Rocky Mountains forming 75 million years ago that's a lot more years to have gotten worn down.  Because it's "the best example of a monadnock in massive granite in North Carolina" (per Wikipedia) it's been designated a National Natural Landmark.

The map of the state park shows numerous hiking trails, all of which looked much more strenuous than either Dext or I was in condition to tackle.  I guess there's a park road that would take us completely around the dome, but what with all the tall green trees (the photo above was taken in March and already shows a lot of greenery), I figured if I couldn't see anything either from the drive in or from the campground then I couldn't count on getting a view from the road, especially since no viewpoints were marked on the map.  So I missed the mountain.

Otherwise, this was a nice campground - paved campsites and roads, lots of trees and bushes, a stream running through the middle of the campsites.  The stream was called Big Sandy Creek and there seemed to be a healthy flow of water in it, which helped cool the air.

I heard a woodpecker that was so loud I figured it was likely a Pileated Woodpecker - our country's largest since the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is now probably extinct.

This afternoon Dext and I went out for a walk, but got caught in rain.  Actually, it started sprinkling soon after we started but I kept going - until the sprinkling got strong enough to qualify as rain, so we went back.  We were only gone about 15 minutes but in that time I found the kittens had jumped on the table, thrown my new computer mouse on the floor, and started ripping up my pages of notes.  I lost it.  I started screaming at them.  And I saw it as a compounding injury that I had to clean up the mess besides being the victim of it.

After a bit I stopped screaming so Jimmy came sauntering out of hiding like nothing was wrong - and I started screaming at him again.  This happened twice and finally he was so cowed he was afraid to come out to eat his supper.  Bucky, having a reasonably functioning brain, had stayed lying low the whole time and was able to recognize that he was allowed to come eat supper.  But Jimmy, having almost no ability to form rational thoughts, couldn't do any of that.  He did finally come out to eat at the last minute.

I keep thinking I'll be glad when they grow up - and I can see that with Bucky he's beginning to mature.  But I'm also starting to see that with Jimmy I will always have a child - never an adult.  I'm not sure he'll ever be anything but a child for his entire life.  And for someone who prefers an orderly life, that's a mildly depressing thought.  But we just keep on keeping on, and hoping for the best, I guess.

We were so far into the hinterlands here that I didn't even bother checking to see if I could pick up an internet signal.  Instead I worked with the word processing program on recent travel notes.