The Summer 6

 The search for waterfalls shows no signs of slowing.  On a nice November day, we hooked up with friends and headed north to Stone Mountain State Park.  The park is an easy 90 minute drive from home, straight up I-77.  We took the Elkin exit, drove past exit for Carter Falls, and pulled in to the Upper Trailhead Parking Lot.   From here we made a strategic error. We knew our whole group didn't want to make the 4.5 mile loop with >1,000 of elevation gain.  The main waterfall was a short distance on the map.  So we left the parking lot on a 0.3 mile trek to the falls.  We were greeted by the top of a 200 foot beautiful waterfall.  We were also greeted by roughly 300 stairs.  We climbed down, down, down through one landing on to the base.  There were lots of places for the kids to play and they enjoyed climbing on the rocks.  However, we had to go back up those stairs to continue out way to the summit. After making it back...

Our oldest son's Boy Scout Troop headed down to Lumber River State Park November 13-15.  Lumber River State Park is south of Lumberton, NC, north of Dillon SC, right on the NC/SC line.  It is about 2:20 from our home.   The trip was in flux due to Hurricane Eta, the 28th named storm of the 2020 year (2020 always with the records).  A lot of rain was dumped in the region Thursday, with Charlotte seeing over nine inches that day alone.  We watched to see how the river would hold up, as it had notoriously flooded back in 2015 with another hurricane.   We had a group site at the Princess Ann access.  Two other sites ended up being inaccessible.  Otherwise, though, we had no issues for our campout.  There was also a large filed for "overflow" group camping that would have been sufficient had our site flooded.  The overflow site was the spot for the town of Princess Ann, chartered in 1796.  The town site was up on a hill over th...