3/26/12 NEBRASKA SAND HILLS, ROSEBUD REZ AND HOME

SHOULD BE A NICE DAY

ROSEBUD CASINO

OGALLALA  SIOUX INDIAN ESERVATION

SAND HILLS AND HIGH PLAINS GRASSLANDS

Monday, 7:30 AM.  29 degrees F, wind SW, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is mostly clear and the barometer is down slightly.  It will be a nice day as it warms up.  The maple sugarin’ is evidently  a bust this year, the sap run occurring very early and short lived at that.  Andy and Judy have about given up.  I imagine the sap will flow today, however, as it got cold last night and should warm up nicely today, conditions which produce a sap run, until the trees bud out.  I am sure some producers watched conditions closely enough to produce some maple syrup but in general it was a bad season.
        The last leg of our journey, the return to Wisconsin, was via I 75 north from Denver to I 80 east in Nebraska, and then straight north on US 83 again through Nebraska from North Plate to Valentine, Nebraska and through the huge Ogallala Sioux Rosebud Indian Reservation to Murdo, South Dakota. Then east on I 90 across South Dakota and Minnesota to I 39, then north to Minneapolis/
St. Paul to I 94 east.  Once across the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers into Wisconsin, we took US 63 North to Hwy 2 and on to Ashland and Bayfield.  We take Hwy 83 through the Nebraska Sand Hills because it is arguably one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in the country, the Sand Hills compelling for its unique scenery of grass covered dunes and oasis-like prairie potholes.  The Sand Hills merge into the stunning expanses of rolling grassland in the Dakotas. 
        The  prairie potholes did not yet have many migratory waterfowl, but soon will be filled with ducks and geese.  Our trip overall offered a lot of wildlife viewing, even if only from a moving vehicle.  Many deer and antelope, eagles and hawks, including a huge golden eagle in Texas; turkeys aplenty and a Wisconsin bear.  Nothing exciting perhaps but good proof of the ecological fitness of most of the country.  Our route did not cross the usual flyways of the sandhill cranes and we saw none.  More obvious than wildlife, wesaw hundreds, maybe thousands of newborn calves, in some places virtually a calf for every cow.  Obviously a good spring for the cattlemen. 
        As I have aluded to previously, the Rosebud Indian Reservation is a true American tragedy, as are many of the reservations, but the Rosebud is truly an example of failed federal policies and the result of centuries of cultural failures on both sides of the ledger.  I will give my analysis and viewpoints at another time.