October 19, 2011

Indian Grinding Rock State Park

Last Friday we went to Indian Grinding Rock State Park in Volcano California. I'd been wanting to go for a while and we finally took some time to do it.


The sheer number of holes in rocks was very impressive, especially when you start thinking about how long it must have taken the Native Americans to grind out those holes.


We had some rain last week so most of the holes were filled with water.


It was such a beautiful day.


They had a replica village and a round house that the local tribe uses for ceremonies.


We saw this awesome hawk in a huge oak tree.


The park was really awesome and totally worth the drive to go see it. However, on the way up there we saw signs for Dark Chasm National Landmark. It was just a couple miles up the road from the park but we didn't know what it was so we didn't go. Turns out it's a really cool cave that you can take a walking tour through. I totally want to go back and check that out some time.

2 comments:

Thimbleanna said...

Wow -- that looks really interesting. Do they have a theory as to what the holes in the rock were for?

Lisa said...

It's a pestal and morter type of thing. The holes were created when the Native Americans used a rock as a pestal and gound acorns and other native plants for "flour".

It really awed us to think of how long it must have taken them to grind the acorns to flour, not to mention how many years it would have taken to make the holes and there were so many holes. The tribe must have been using that same area for hundreds of years.

Beautiful and amazing.