Melissa Goodnight

Since we moved here in 2019, we have only been to Stone Mountain one time and that was to hike the mountain. We parked off property and walked in. We hiked the mountain, nearly died, then hiked back down. Then, we vowed, as sweat poured down our backs, butts, and ankles (yeah, ankles can sweat) to never go back to Stone Mountain. 

Stone Mountain is problematic at best, scary after a certain time at worst. It’s one of the necessary evils of Atlanta, like The Varsity or the MARTA. Yet, it’s the most visited tourist site in the entire state, so there are festivals each year that we have routinely considered, but never attended. But this year there are a couple we want to go to, including the Pumpkin Festival in October and the Native American Pow-Wow in November, so over the weekend (my birthday weekend, thankyouverymuch) Jerimiah and I decided to drive over to Stone Mountain for the 55th Annual Yellow Daisy Festival.

We didn’t really do any reading about the festival, we just decided to go. Jackson was away this weekend with the high school TSA Officers (he’s the President of the high school chapter, as a freshman… a freshman…) so right after we dropped him off we headed over.

Stone Mountain is located in the city of Stone Mountain, which is the town right next to us. Like, we can see the mountain from our Sam’s Club, it’s like a 10 minutes drive, but whew, that hike did us in. Anyway, we drive over, get a parking pass for the season, which will prompt us to go again, and park.

The parking is nuts! There are so many people there that I’m like, “Wow, people really must love yellow daisies! How exciting!” Because of course, yellow daisies are some of my favorites too!

Y’all. You. All. I’m pretty sure Jerimiah and I were the only people at the 55th Annual Yellow Daisy Festival at Stone Mountain this weekend, looking for yellow daisies…

There are no daisies. 

None. Zero. Zilch.

Y’all, it’s a craft fair. 

Don’t get me wrong, it was a good one. In fact, it’s one of the best ones in the South and people FLOCK to this bad bitch annually. They come with wagons and tubs, trailers and pick-ups. They buy, buy, buy! But you know, we just weren’t prepared for that.

When we walked in there was a nice large entrance covered in flowers. However, there was a very small selection of yellow daisies, so we kind of thought that maybe it was because we were about to see miles and miles of them.

We stopped at the map and it showed loops we were supposed to follow and large open areas. We both assumed that is where the daisies were. We both assumed this, but we said nothing to each other. We were just there to enjoy the outdoors and the flowers and we weren’t in any kind of hurry, so we just started on Loop A.

One hour later, when no daisies presented themselves, when we passed beer tents and cheese tents and people selling your name on rice and Christmas ornaments, when we were lost and fairly sure we had done all the loops, we looked at each other, and then I said, “I don’t think there are daisies here.”

That’s when we felt tres dumb, as Jackson would say. 

Luckily, they were hocking Tucker Brewing’s Roaring Twenties Raddler, so we had a beer and listened to a band that just took the stage and then we dreamed of what it would look like if among the vendors were just rows and rows of yellow daisies. Le sigh. Maybe next year.

M.