We knew it was coming. It did. A rainy, foggy day. I took a walk around the quiet campground in the early morning fog. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t help but praise the Lord as I walked!
Saturday morning at the campground.
Isn’t it absolutely wonderful?
We spent the day in the coach today, working on some paperwork and watching a long movie. Chili was in the crockpot, smelling up the place all day, so we ended up eating an early dinner. 😊
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SISTER-IN-LAW (meaning she’s married to my brother), KELLI!
You’ll see many of these birthday wishes this month! We have a lot of them!
Now for Sunday.
One misty, moisty morning
When cloudy was the weather . . .
You’d think since there are a minimum of 15 Baptist Churches (and that’s just the Baptist ones!) within a 15 minute radius of our campground, we would have gone to church today. We didn’t. None of the signs posted start times and the couple we were able to call from the road on Friday didn’t have times on their answering machines. Sigh . . . We couldn’t even listen to The Chapel because we have no service. Heavy Sigh . . . So we talked a bit about the history of some of the books of the Bible, then broke off into our individual time.
About 1pm, we headed out to hike to three different waterfalls in the Stone Mountain State Park (same place as our campground). The trails were all connected, so we walked ½ mile from our site to the trailhead and visited all three falls – about 5 miles total.
The very top of the Stone Mountain Waterfall
A little further down
A side view
But just wait, the whole 200′ is coming up!
We’re just not there yet. . .
We knew some of the trails were closed because of damage from a storm on October 23rd, but seeing the damage up close and personal was pretty incredible. The pictures don’t do it justice. There was so much devastation around us, we started a discussion as to where you would hole up to wait out the storm if necessary. There weren’t any caves or anything, so we decided hugging a large tree (unless it started to move!) to be the best possible option.
Oh. Did I mention that we ignored the warning signs?
So did quite a few other people – at least half of them with small children.
The rangers had spent the past two weeks clearing the trees off the trails. The only part that was dangerous were the steps down to the base of the 200’ Stone Mountain Falls. It was fine, just had to do some climbing down and then back up.
Fresh sawdust on the steps
Anyway, we visited Stone Mountain Falls (very briefly because it was kinda crowded today) . . .
Middle Falls . . .
On the way to the Middle Falls
View of the trail
Middle Falls
Middle Falls
and Lower Falls . . .
Yep. This is the Lower Falls. We thought there surely must be more, so we crossed over.
But there was nothing else. And this is the exact location on the map. Someone had a real sense of humor when they named this one. This is as low a fall as I’ve ever seen. Bless their heart!
Back at the campground check-in booth we had to walk past on our way home, we learned that the storm was actually an F1 tornado! It came through about 4:30pm and closed this park and Chimney Rock State Park – about 90 miles away. In addition, last week, they had another storm with 50mph gusts!
Nice hike! Even in the 100% humidity because of the fog.