Patricia Harrelson

Gianna, Athan, and I went to Grinding Rock State Park in Pine Grove where we met Sandy and John who gave us a royal tour. Sandy and John are camp hosts at the park. They live in their RV and take care of the campground by day and make jewelry at night. They’ve been living the nomadic artist life for several years, and we had the pleasure of visiting them at their latest landing, this little known Park off of Highway 88.

They love this little State Park and have learned a lot about it in the few months that they have been its hosts. They took us on a great tour and showed us lots of marvelous sights, including the museum where Athan studied the map and chose some of the places he wanted to see. We visited the round house, called the Hung’ge, as well as the huge grinding rock with numerou petroglyphs and scurrying lizards. We saw the mother oak sitting in the center of a circle of her babies. We hiked to the environmental campground (one of Athan’s choices) and we saw a bees’ nest high in an oak tree. Everything was still very green with tons of wildflowers everywhere.

After lots of hiking we had lunch at Sandy’s and John’s campsite. We took a short walk after lunch around the campground and we each picked our favorite site should we ever come to spend the night at Grinding Rock Campground. Not surprisingly, we each had a different favorite. It would be hard to settle on a final choice but not hard to revisit Sandy, John, and this sweet little State Park.