Day 1 Tuesday April 2,
2019 Today we return to Stone Mountain State Park for our 5th
year as Volunteer Campground Hosts. We got up early to try and get
ahead of the rain that was on the way but it was raining before we
departed at 6:40AM. We stopped for a quick breakfast near Wallace. It
rained almost all the way to Greensboro. It stopped and we got some
fine snow. It cleared again until we got about 30 miles past
Greensboro when it really started snowing hard with wet snow for
about 20 miles. Then we ran up on some road construction that brought
the traffic to a standstill for awhile. The last 15 miles of the trip
was all sunshine and we arrived at 12:30PM so with all the rain, snow
and traffic we made good time.
We backed into our hosts
site, had lunch and got everything set up in a couple of hours. We
don't start our duties until Thursday, so we will relax today and
tomorrow. The sun was shining so we set outside and enjoyed it for a
couple of hours. Sure a big change from the weather on the way here.
Maybe there will more days with sunshine while we are here unlike,
last year when it rained almost every day in April here.
One of the Rangers (Kassie)
came by the site to welcome us and bring the Host's keys and our time
sheet. No, we don't get paid but they want us to keep track of the
hours we work. Normally our combined hours are about 40 hours a week.
We have already seen about a
dozen deer grazing on the grass around the campground.
Day 2 Wednesday April 3,
2019 We had breakfast in Elkin, then drove to Hamptonville to the
Shiloh General Store (an Amish store) to get some of their local
milk, fresh baked bread and a few other goodies. Then we stopped at
another local Amish farm to get some of their greenhouse tomatoes. We
returned to the park and got everything ready to start our first day
of “work” tomorrow.
Day 3 Thursday April 4,
2019 I went to the Contact Station to run our reservation report and
then we put out all the reservation signs on the campsites and raked
and cleaned several sites. After lunch we relieved Jackie at the
Contact Station from 1:30-5:15PM so she could work at the Visitor
Center during that time. We checked in campers and sold firewood,
etc.
Rain is in the forecast for
all day tomorrow so we put out the reservation signs for Friday so we
wouldn't have to do it in the rain tomorrow morning.
All the park except for the
campground was closed today until 3PM because the park was during
some blasting to clear some rocks that had come down during a rock
slide on some of the trails.
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| Our home away from home |
Day 4 Friday April 5,
2019 As forecast it started raining about 5AM and rained until a
little past 5PM, so we stayed in most of the day. After the rain stopped
I did a couple of passes through the campground to make sure
everything was okay and relieved Jackie at the Contact Station so she
could have a lunch break.
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| Twin trees with a mossey bottom on our site |
Day 5 Saturday April 6,
2019 We went out at 8AM in dense fog to put out the reservation signs
for today and check the campground. The fog was so thick we could
only see a hundred feet or so in front of us. By 9AM the sun finally
came out and burned the fog away. The campground will be almost full
tonight if all the reservations come in. We did our campground duties
and worked in the Contact Station for a couple of hours so Jackie and
Wilma (at the Visitor's Center) could have a lunch break.
We saw another first today
in a campground for us. A really long (probably 32') stretch
limousine came into the campground twice. There were a bunch of
people in three sites that were together and we heard one of them was
having a birthday so it probably was related to that.
Today the weather was really
nice and the campers were out hiking, kids riding their bicycles and
everyone enjoying the outdoors.
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| Foot path across our site |
Day 6 Sunday April 7,
2019 I call Sundays “shift change” because all the “weekenders”
leave and then the campers that are mostly older, probably retired
folks come in for a few days while it is quieter. We cleaned/raked as
many sites as we could while they were vacant and then did like
Saturday and worked in the Contact Station for a couple of hours
during the lunch period.
We have noticed campers here
from several different states and Canada.
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| View from site 89 down into the campground with view of Smokey Mountains in background |
Day 7 Monday April 8,
2019 After breakfast we cleaned/raked more sites and helped the
maintenance staff clean several fire pits. After lunch we had a
fairly quite day so we did some reading until later we put out the
reservation signs for Tuesday in between some rain showers.
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| Big Sandy Creek runs through the middle of the campground |
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