Ah, mountain driving... not our favorite. But the park is lovely and our spot (#76) at Stone Mountain State Park was huge and backed up to a small creek. Too bad there were no trees for the hammocks. Friday evening was nice and quiet. The word for Saturday was: hike.
As the name implies, Stone Mountain is a mountain. It took us about 5 hours to hike to the 2,800' summit. And only later did we learn that we ascended up the difficult side! Molly,#aprilSapir, and I were beat, but we made it. The views at the top were amazing. The walk down the mountain was mostly silent... except for the groans and complaints. When we arrived back at Roxy it was nap time! April hopped into bed and didn't move for 2 hours. We we too tired to even cook. But we did enjoy a delightfully cool evening (too bad we forgot sleeping bags or even a blanket!)
Coming home was another adventure... The first (yes, first) flat tire occurred around Greensboro. Luckily we were stopped for gas when I heard the unmistakable sound of air escaping: psssssssssst. I pulled to the back of Sheetz and put on the spare in about 30 minutes.
Nearly an hour later, as we entered Chapel Hill, I noticed a severe vibration from the front of the truck (not the spare). We exited the highway and zeroed in to a tire shop. Even though they were swamped, Travis was able to show us the problem: broken belt. We narrowly avoided a real disaster.
An hour or so later, Rusty had 4 new tires and we finally made it home without incident.