Western Trek

There's been a large silence lately due to last week's travels into the mixed grass prairies of South Dakota and Nebraska. My class camped in the Badlands and in Wind Cave National Park, and while I didn't tote along my computer, I did bring a camera.



It rained every day of our trip, usually in the afternoons or evenings. On the first day, my tent mate and I had just gotten settled into our lodgings when the distant storm clouds started rolling our way. We watched from the class van as wind, rain, and hail pelted the nylon structure, bending to into a 45 degree angle with the ground. Afterwards, we were relieved to find that through our sleeping bags were a bit soggy, our tent and other belongings had survived. Our neighbors, however, were not so lucky.



When it wasn't raining, we enjoyed the South Dakota wildlife. Here I am in my field gear next to Wall Drug's giant jackalope. Though I saw many mounted specimens, I didn't find the strange creature in the prairies. Instead, squeaking prairie dogs populated these plains.

And Then the Sky Dropped

Here are a couple of pictures of yesterday's storm, just minutes before it hit. We were in Minnesota at The Nature Conservancy's Red Rock Prairie doing a transect when the sky turned dark. (More on transecting later.) You can see some of my group in the second picture, walking toward the van. We drove away from the storm, but watched the wind and nearly horizontal rain whip the grasses around and pound the prairie flat. The radio said that the winds were around sixty mph. We returned after lunch, about an hour later, to a sunny but humid field.