What A Grind

There hasn't been a lot of job variation here at the park so we were pleased to hear that a stump grinder would be arriving.  It is on loan from another park and will have to be returned in a few weeks.

There are hundreds of stumps in the campground ranging from small 6 inch to over 8 feet in diameter.  The park manager told us that he would spray a green dot on the stumps that needed grinding.

This is a very nice grinder that doesn’t have any trouble doing the job.

There are 2 campgrounds here at Martin Dies State Park separated by Highway 190.  With 3 couples doing 2 1/2 hour shifts, we were really making progress the first week.

Mark moving the grinder to another stump.

I think Mark was having a lot of fun with this new equipment.

Here is the operator’s view:

After the stump is ground a couple of inches below ground I have the job of filling in the hole and spreading the shavings around.

The large stumps produce an unbelievable amount of shavings!

As we drove around the park we noticed that there were many stumps that didn’t have a green dot.  We asked one of the maintenance guys about this. We were told that those stumps might have some archaeological artifacts and could not be disturbed.  Well, you know how rumors are!  Since this didn’t seem right we waited a couple of days and asked the park manager who was the one painting the dots on the stumps.  Sure enough, he didn’t know what we were talking about and told us he didn’t mark stumps he thought would be too hard to get to and that he never finished marking one of the campgrounds!

With the holidays and rainy weather, we’re don’t think we will finish this project before we leave but it’s nice to have something different to do.

Teri