In reaching Standing Stone State Park you’ve glided down the western escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau, onto its limestone buttress, the Eastern Highland Rim, riddled with more caves per square mile than any region in America. Standing Stone is a New Deal park, also, decked with cabins crafted entirely from American Chestnut boards and handwork everywhere from the fossiliferous limestone rocks. BRAT camping will be right below the greatest piece of stone masonry, a lovely dam and spillway guiding Mill Creek back into its boundaries.

The park’s most unique feature is a carefully cultivated marble yard, created to host the National Rolley Marbles Championships. The game is an unbroken tradition, played on a long yard of sifted dirt with handmade flint marbles. This yard and tournament has been visited by NBC and ABC world news, CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kurault, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and was even featured by Charles Shultz in the Peanuts strip and a television special. BRAT riders can learn the game, play the game, and spectate upon some of the marble legends on the yard. The National Championship is looming the weekend after the Ride. You’ve never seen anything quite like it.