Vivian Swift is an author/illustrator (When Wanderers Cease to Roam; Le Road Trip; Gardens of Awe and Folly) from Long Island, NY. I love her work and follow her blog. Earlier this year, Vivian went to Scotland, and while in the town of Stromness she found a painted rock. One side was blue with white lettering ("Shh...I'm hiding") and the other side said "Stromness Rocks" with a Facebook logo.
This is a thing in many places around the world -- people paint rocks, leave them in public places, and strangers who find them can either keep them or put them somewhere new, and they post about it on social media.
Vivian decided to take the rock that she found back to Long Island, and then she asked for volunteers to "host" it on a U.S. tour. She mailed the rock to the first host, who took photos of it at local sights, and then mailed it on to the next person. Eventually it will get back to Vivian, who will make a scrapbook to send the rock with back to Stromness in Scotland. Okay, it's a bit of an odd thing to do, but hey, why not?
Above is the rock in front of the conning tower of a nuclear submarine -- one of Richland's attractions. It was the first submarine to circumnavigate the world completely submerged.
Yes, I volunteered to host the rock from Stromness. It reached me last Monday, and I showed it around the area as best I could. I took it with me to my volunteer gig at the Friends of the Library book shop.
Vivian's town also has such a shop, which she co-manages.
The next day I drove it 68 miles north to Vantage, WA to see the ancient rock carvings at the Gingko Petrified Forest State Park.
And I posed it on one of the petrified tree stumps overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.
There's a gem and rock shop in Vantage, with dinosaur statues out front. I had to stop there!
The little blue rock is hiding nicely among these agates:
The next day I tootled on over to the local museum.
It has a natural history section:
Which has a lot of information about the ice-age floods that carved out our unique region:
Over in the history section about the role the area played in the Manhattan Project, there's a Geiger counter display. I used the wand there to check the rock's radioactivity, which luckily registered hardly at all.
The next day I took it to see our vintage 1949 Uptown Shopping Center:
And down at our main park, I spotted one of the paddle wheel riverboats that ply our waters:
And later I went to the Atomic Lanes bowling alley to show the rock how small town Americans entertain themselves:
It was a fun and silly little adventure, which I enjoyed participating in, and I hope to get a copy of the scrapbook someday.
That's really pretty cool. You gave it quite the tour. Vivian should be suitably impressed. Hope you get a scrapbook!
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