The Other Grand Canyon

Starting to catch up on a little blogging. Eventually I’ll get around to writing about my road trip this past weekend to visit Alex and about how I was physically assaulted in the stands of Michigan Stadium during the Penn State-Michigan football game. How’s that for a teaser?!
Earlier this month there was a two-Saturday stretch where I didn’t watch any college football during the day. And you know what? I survived just fine, much to my surprise. 😉 On Saturday the 3rd it was the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK relay race that took up the entire day, and on Saturday the 10th it was the 4th annual PSCG Fall Retreat. During the retreat I didn’t even have cell phone reception all day long at the lodge.
We actually started the retreat this year on Friday night the 9th, with the first talk by the retreat speaker at the Hollemans house. This year’s speaker was Randy Newman, who has worked with Campus Crusade for Christ (PSCG’s parent organization) since 1980, and recently has been involved in Faculty Commons, the faculty ministry of Cru, but also speaks regularly to grad students and undergrads. He’s also worked for many years with the Chaplain’s Office at the Pentagon, and speaks there every week. In addition to all that, he’s written several articles and books, including “Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did” and “Corner Conversations: Engaging Dialogues About God and Life.”
With the one talk Friday night and three talks on Saturday, Randy had a four-part series on the Christian worldview, where he focused on the four pillars of the Christian worldview. His first talk was on creation (Genesis 1), his second talk was on rebellion (Genesis 3), this third talk was about redemption (Romans 3), and his fourth and final talk was about consummation (Revelation 21). Randy Newman was a very engaging speaker, and I felt like I learned things from every talk.
I played keyboard at church on Sunday morning the 11th, partly as a change of pace from the piano, partly because I know Ben (who was leading that week) is a fan of having the keyboard play background strings in general. I didn’t go to rehearsal on Saturday night because of the retreat, though. I usually prefer not to show up on Sunday morning without having done any practicing or rehearsal, but this week it worked out to do just the pre-service rehearsal on Sunday morning. As an interesting stat, this marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that I was in the worship band, and the sixth Sunday in the past seven (or the seventh of the last eight Sundays for which I’ve been in State College). I’ve just had a two-week hiatus though, with Paul & Ben doing a two-man set two Sundays ago, followed by the youth band leading worship this past Sunday (when I was out of town in Ann Arbor anyway). I knew I’d been playing a lot lately, but until I looked up the actual numbers, I didn’t realize just how frequently it’s been recently. And this wasn’t a complaint that I’ve been playing quite a bit, because I do enjoy playing music at church, but rather just an observation.
After church on the 11th several people from PSCG were planning a road trip and hiking expedition to the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. For those of you who didn’t either attend PSU or grow up in PA, how many of you didn’t even know that Pennsylvania had its own Grand Canyon? Well, there is one, way up in the desolate north-central part of the state, about a two-hour drive north of State College. Originally I wasn’t planning to go up there, but then I decided fairly last-minute that I would go. I realized that I often have thought or said, “I want to go to the PA Grand Canyon sometime,” or, “I should just take a drive around central PA some day when the fall colors are at or near peak,” or, “I should just get out and do more stuff.” So I decided I really should take advantage of the opportunity. I mean, seriously, how much work would I actually have gotten done had I stayed home? Anyway, we took three vehicles up there from State College, and I drove one of them because I wanted to come back before supper (also, Game 3 of the Twins-Yankees series was set to start at 7pm that night). The drive was pretty scenic, especially the 40-mile stretch of PA-287 between Jersey Shore and Wellsboro. We definitely hit peak fall color along that road! We could also tell we were getting close to the Grand Canyon because of all the kitschy tourist traps (like Animaland) and RV campgrounds.
Once we arrived at the PA Grand Canyon (Leonard Harrison State Park is the actual name of the park, and the canyon itself is actually called Pine Creek Gorge), we took in the view from the rim for a bit, and then started the hike down the trail. It was a pretty hike, following Four Mile Creek for a good bit as it descended to Pine Creek.

I’m glad I took the time to go up there, it was a great hike. And now I can say I’ve hiked in three Grand Canyons – first in the Grampians (Victoria, Australia), then in Arizona and now in Pennsylvania. As cool as the ones here in PA and in Australia are, the one in Arizona is slightly more impressive. 🙂