Camping trip number two is officially under our belts. We decided to head to Stone Mountain State Park in North Carolina for our Memorial Day weekend holiday.
If you haven't visited this park before and live in the area, you should consider it for a quick family camping getaway. The campground itself was very nice. The pads were decent sized, the majority of them were wooded, and the bathrooms were well maintained with hot showers and a nice large sink for cleaning dishes.
If you like a bit more privacy, I'd recommend campsites 10-24 as my top choices. All of these sites are wooded and back to more trees vs. more campers. The only ones I wouldn't recommend are 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, or 8 as they back to the RV section of the park and have a fairly steep drop off which I wouldn't have felt comfortable with having small children.
There were plenty of activities to entertain the kids as well. Be sure to bring your swimsuits and your fishing poles. We, of course, forgot both, but still managed to make do and have a fun time in the water. Some of the highlights of our trip were hiking to the top of Stone Mountain and playing in the waterfalls and slides that exist naturally in the park. There are also some really great ranger led activities in the summer time as well as some great trout fishing for the anglers in your family.
Setting up Camp. You can see the bathrooms in the back. We were on pad 7 and had about 1000ft. between us and the showers.
Hiking to the top of Stone Mountain. There were a whole lot of steps on this hike.
Enjoying some waterplay at the waterfalls. You can see the natural slides on the left side. Kids were wearing plastic bags on their bottoms to slide faster.
Finally, a few fun pictures taken of the boys around camp and the park.
The one thing that I will remember about this campsite that I want to share before finishing up this post is the number of daddy long legs we had at tent pad.
These guys were everywhere. Big ones, small ones, all colors and shapes. When we went to take down our tent two days later there were at least a bakers dozen on top of the tent under the rain flap. Just to give you an idea of what we found:
Yep, there's four in a row just on that one side alone. So keep your tent zipped or you may be having some visitors. Next month we're planning to head to Grandfather Mountain and will most likely stay at our first private campground. So be on the lookout for that review!
Also, In the next couple weeks, I'll post a few recipes from this trip that will make your mouth water without a lot of work.
Happy Trails!
