April 29, 2012
Cabin Trip
I just got home from a really fun weekend trip up to a cabin near Glade Valley NC (with Amy, Jeannie, Matty, Emily, and Andy). The cabin belongs to a friend of ours and she loans it out to friends on a regular basis. Its a wonderful place to get away and enjoy the outdoors. Her cabin and the surrounding area is so beautiful.Today we decided to hike in Stone Mountain State Park. We climbed up what seemed like a million steps to the top of a mountain where suddenly there was a large open area made of rock, and when I say large I mean humongous. Its like the mountain has a bald spot of stone. There were several areas where you could walk out and see a spectacular view from on top of these interesting stone landscapes. All of these stone areas curve downward towards the valley below (I almost lost my Nalgene water bottle as it started to roll!)
I walked around some trees and to the west and I saw an even larger stone mountain that looked nearly twice as tall, in the direction we were heading.
The trail zig-zaged several times and I thought “thank goodness this will be over soon” (oh but I was wrong). When we got to the top of this mountain the view was truly amazing (I wish I would have taken a picture). After resting for a while we started the decent on what seemed like an infinite series of steps (I stopped counting after 50 steps) and my legs became rubber.
At the base of the series of steps and around the corner was a interesting serious of farm buildings where once a family had farmed this area. Behind these buildings looked strait up at the giant stone mountain we had just looked down from.
Then after walking through a shady cool ravine we started walking next to a fairly fast-moving creek ultimately leading up another enormous set of stairs and down another to the base of what looked like a giant stone water slide. A sign said it was 200 feet from the top to the bottom. Then we walked up even more stairs, and finally back to the visitor parking lot.
