We thought the leaves were beautiful back in Mt Airy, but they were nothing compared to what we encountered along the way here!
And once we arrived at Stone Mountain State Park? Indescribable!
Which is probably a good thing, since we were immediately invaded by lady bugs! We’ve never seen the like! There were literally hundreds of them all over our coach, especially the door and then before you can say, “Bob’s your uncle”, they were inside too! Blaine took it a bit more calmly than I did. I was concerned about an infestation, but he got out our in-coach sweeper (after assuring me they couldn’t get out of the tank) and started sweeping them up. We couldn’t keep up. Just when we thought we got ‘em all, more showed up!
We were too busy trying to get rid of them to take pictures. I wish I’d taken one of our shower skylight! There must have been a hundred on it! This is the best we have, and it doesn’t look like anything. You’ll just have to trust me.
We took a drive (BTW – they apparently didn’t like the Jeep) to the Park Office to see if they had any suggestions. They didn’t and we had to drive about 5 minutes to get any type of cell service at all, so we could Google. What we discovered helped me accept our fate much better.
They were looking for a place to ‘winter over’. They don’t harm anything. They don’t bite (which I already knew). They find a warm place. Sleep for the winter, then scamper out in Spring and go about their merry way. Whew! Not that I want them taking up residence in some hidden corner, but I can live with that. And why our coach? Apparently, they’re partial to light-colored ‘buildings’ – especially ones with a southern exposure and sunlight. Parked on our lovely site as we are, we met all the criteria they were looking for in winter real estate. Bummer.
When we returned, we sucked up more of the ladies and then decided to wait until evening and go through the coach again. No more came in after sunset, which is good because I really didn’t want to sleep with the possibility of them crawling around on my bed.
This was not on our agenda for today.
But we cannot deny the spectacular beauty of this park! It is simply stunning beyond description!
Parking lot at the Stone Mountain State Park Visitor Center
View of “The Rock” from the Visitor Center
Since we have no signal here (other than some texting occasionally), we drove the 25 minutes to the nearest WalMart to see if they had a signal booster. (Not sure exactly what that is, but it’s supposed to give me my internet back!) They didn’t have them, and the nearest Best Buy? 75 miles away!!! And there was no signal all the way to the WalMart parking lot. We’re soooo dependent now! All that said, we’ll be off the grid for the next week.
Blaine made a lovely campfire tonight, but after a rather large dinner of chicken pasta and leftovers, neither of us were hungry for s’mores, or even a couple of marshmallows. How sad is that??
We watched the moon rise over the mountain and tried to take pictures. Why don’t they ever come out? Here’s what we have . . .
Those are lights from campsites across the way from us
