Wednesday we had a snow storm. Friday it was 75 degrees. I don't
get this state.
The Redfield Library, home to little old ladies and internet, has
been without internet all week. That has made it hard to do our work,
as we needed to access maps. Without said maps, we could not find the sites we
needed, which led to many misadventures.
The project I am working on is a collaboration between two rival
groups within SDSU- the wildlife people and the fish heads. I have already
mentioned how each group dislikes the other, but I never fully understood how
much until this week. In the Ruby/Sapphire Pokemon games, there are two main villainous
forces. Team Magma wants to remove all water from the world, while Team Aqua
wishes to flood it. When I played those games, I thought they was stupid.
No one wants to flood the world or wants to create a desert planet. That's
crazy.
Then I came to South Dakota.
Fisheries people want to create as much fish habitat as possible,
even the detriment of the land around it, while the wildlife folks seem bent on
removing any and all of the attributes that fish need from streams to turn them
into simple watering holes. They don't seem to focus or care that
both environments can promote a healthy ecosystem. Each side tries to
implement studies and land management practices that benefit their own group, regardless
of how it affects the other side of the shore.
Of course that is an exaggeration, not everyone hates
the other group. There's one fellow who thinks working together is a good idea.
After a week of the two sides arguing about which sites to use we final
had a selection and went out to field tests the sites the other day to see if
they are were accurately represented on the map software we had. Spoiler Alert:
They weren’t.
The previous day it had snowed and then warmed up so that all of
the back roads were either slushy snow or deep mud, neither of which were
particularly easy or fun to travel through. Some sites took us three tries or
more before we could find a road that we could enter from.
We had a goal of finding and confirming all of the twelve sites we
would use that would satisfy both the fisheries requirements (stream that will
hold water all summer long which has both banks in CREP land) and our needs
(grasslands) in one day Fifteen hours later, we had scoured the northern side
of the state and had only found four acceptable ones.
The gas stations in South Dakota are vastly different than the
ones in Michigan. So far, the only one we share is Shell. A lot of them seem to
be one off stores, with such great names as “The Two Fisted Feedery” “Guzzels”
and “Pump ‘N Pak.”
“Pump ‘N Pak” comes from the mystifying town of Britton were child
labor laws seem nonexistent. In our Grand Tour of northern South Dakota we passed
through the town several times, and eventually stopped for dinner at Subway. The
counter, cash register, and everything else was run by middle schoolers. The
manager didn’t even look twelve. Food was good though.
If the owners of the Transformers ever run out of cars to use,
they should just start using farm equipment. They already have scythes and
bladed wheels sticking out of every corner, wouldn’t take much to make them
into a robot death machine.
Yesterday we continued our Grand Tour of South Dakota, this time
in the south of the state, to find more sites. The south is far much exciting
than the north. Whereas the northern side is full of cropland, the south is
filled with rolling hills and large boulders. And pink roads. Mustn’t forget
the pink roads.
Now we have eight of twelve sties. Hope to finish this Monday. We shall see...
-Me
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