Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 14

Foots and footwashes

Miles 1459 to 2498
Fort Robinson NE to Rawlins WY to Fernley NV

It has been said that Olaf never passes up a footwash. that is true.  I also would say that I do not particularly like Utah. They hate dogs...yes they hate dogs, banning them from the Wasatch Valley, and Utah's motto"Life Elevated" really bugs me as they seem smug about it.  As such, I prefer never to spend any money there, and this footwash at the Bonneville Salt Flats served to wash the stench of it off me.

Do people only wash ONE foot in these things?  I had a foot, another foot, some dog "foots" and as they had a wash, I washed.  I was thinking, why don't they call it a feetwash? If you have a lot of foots, isn't that a lot of feet?  I don't know.

Well we are a thousand miles farther down the road and we learned a lot in Wyoming, valuable RV teaching points.

1) Avoid the wind.  

It blew, and after being pushed around by 40mph winds we holed up in Rawlins and it passed.
to avoid this we learned to keep birder hours, on the road before dawn and tucked in by early afternoon before the wind gets bad

Rawlins was so windy, it was hard to bird,harder to photograph and even deer were hiding behind hedges.  It knew to hunker down in the wind too.  This one was on the front lawn of the hospital.It hissed at my dog.


I was too pooped to go and tour the old prison.

2) DEF is a strange deal.

We have a diesel.  We need to buy DEF (Diesel emission fluid).  My last diesel was a 2004, it didn't need this stuff.  DEF is urea plus water.  It crystalizes and makes a mess. It is hard to actually put in the rig.  It varies in price from about 2.79/ gallon to 10.00 a gallon.  It is all over the board.  No truck stop we've been to has a pump....that would be nice.  I'd pay more for gas just to have a pump

3) It seems there are a myriad of buttons and eventually you figure out everything...eventually

Our TV works!  
It took us 14 days to get the TV to work, thankfully tonight.  We have got the Sat TV to work, but not since Nebraska, more work needs to be done.
I just figured out the bright lights
We still are perplexed by two cable hook ups, which one?  There is a button and a fan in the bedroom near the TV which we have no clue what it is for.

Back to Utah......It is a pretty state as we followed the Donner's path into the state near the ill-fated decision to follow the Hastings Cutoff rather than the normal northward loop of the California trail.  It would be the first of many mistakes.


My dog and me enjoying the salt flats, sorry Utah, she will be gone straight away.  I was minding my own business when I saw something.

then a story I shared yesterday on Facebook...

I'm not even sure if this is the strangest thing I saw today as we see some very very strange crap. back 300 miles in Wyoming, three empty car carriers zip past us on I-80, then we see them acting strange at a rest area. Flash forward to the Bonneville Salt Flats.where I walking the dog.....the car carriers pull off the freeway onto the salt. They stop. A guy in the third rig pulls out and they line up and then, they race. Green takes the prize. have you ever seen car carriers race?


Unreal!
Then they pull onto the freeway and away they go....

So we ended up in West Wendover....a place that has been trying to unite Wendover Utah for years.  They used to have split time zones, Wendover Utah has tried to succeed from Utah but it hasn't happened yet.  They did put West Wendover into Mountain Tine, however.  I was hear during my big year and got a good picture of the east side of Will, this year, I'm on the west side

So I walk across the crosswalk and this RV just slams on the brakes in the middle of the road in the wrong lane. I watch as the woman in the front takes a picture of Will through the windshield, impervious to the traffic. Traffic stopped, they took pictures and then pulled out in front of that SUV and off they went..

4.  RVs are big, people will try to get out of your way. If you need to block traffic, just do it.  I'm a road hazard going up and down mountain passes and I go down as slow as I go up, I put on my flashers and I don't care.  I'm like the tractor blocking the road, if you want to go faster, just go around.  From Captain Ron.  "I learned driving the Saratoga that people will just get out of your way.I passed 4 trucks today and one car.  That was a pretty good day. Yesterday, it was only two.
The other big goings on was a strange collection of car carriers parked in Wendover carrying Teslas, they looked to be just parked there indefinitely.  Hum...makes one wonder why?

Well tomorrow we drive near Donner Pass (I80 is not on the pass as the old highway was)  Hopefully we will fare better then they did all those years ago,  We stalked up with groceries just in case.
At least my feet are clean.
Olaf
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The Toadstools of Nebraska

Voyage of the Land yacht
Miles 729-1459
East Bethel MN to Brookings SD to Fort Robinson Nebraska

It is exactly 9 dead racoons from Brookings SD to Fort Robinson Nebraska, 461 miles.  Add in two dead cats, a dead coyote and something dead that my wife and I could not agree with, add in a very lackluster Vikings game on the radio and it made for a long day in the RV. a bit too moch as the cats started howling when we drove through Chadron, the Magic city (which has nothing to do with magic) and we still had 30 miles to go.

I did a book festival in Brookings, which was poorly laid out and as such, I won't waste my time there again.  It is a mystery of why they moved the biennial east river event from Sioux Falls to Brookings, maybe it was money or maybe just that the organizers don't want to have to drive to the largest city in the state.  It was a forlorned two days for everyone.

But enough of that, now we are in Nebraska, heading west.  Fort Robinson is a cool old Army base steeped in history.




Largely intact, the 140 year old fort served as an internment spot to subdue plains native Americans and then as headquarters of the 9th military and then as the largest quartermaster redoubt in the world from 1919-World War II breeding Army horses and mules.  In World War II it served as a housing for 2,000 German POWs from Rommel's North Afrika Corps.  The only trouble these prisoners of war caused was in another Nebraska camp when they ran our of beer, they rioted.  They accepted 3.2 beer ...reluctantly..

It has been largely restored since closing in 1947 and wirth the USDA pulling out in 1971.  It is a large and generally cool base, they have a nice campground and fairly healthy prairie steppe.


There is also an unsolved mystery of who killed a hobo on the Chicago Northwestern RR line to Lander WY right at this spot in 1940.


This was 63 years after Crazy Horse was killed a few hundred yards north.  It was pretty clear what happened there.

North of here is the Toadstool Geologic Park, it is basically badlands with a two foot layer of sandstone on top of the mud.  The mud erodes quicker.  Much of them have fallen down since being named.


I saw a common checkered skipper, a new butterfly


7 McCown's longspurs and a few odds and ends sparrows


Plus a last look at the sandridge prairie as tomorrow we climb the Pine Ridge before getting into Wyoming.  We will make the Rocky's tomorrow by noon.


I'm camped next to an military doctor buddy from Chuck Probst, an accomplished world lister and Hawaii birding guru who I birded with during my big year in Maui, small world.  Chuck's old Vietnam pal doesn't understand birders much like those at the Brookings Book Festival, we are a misunderstood lot, but oh well....it works for me.


Cheers!
Olaf

Of Ties and Tailgating

Chapter 4:  Of Ties and Tailgating
Excerpts from “Project X”Miles 234-728, East Bethel. MN to Madison, WI            It had been a very warm September week in East Bethel, MN for the first two weeks of our self-imposed exile from the world and slowly but surely we began to figure out what we needed and what we didn’t need in “Big Bird” our 34 foot land-yacht.  We didn’t need three cats.  We need individual storage buckets for underneath and we needed a longer sewage hose.  We need to lock a very friendly cat in the bathroom in the middle of night or that would be the end of sleep.  We need to move our rig the next time we come here to try to get satellite television due to a misplaced tree.  I also need an eastern screech owl but I didn’t need a barred owl, which, it seemed was almost as bad as Snowball the cat at night.            Our last week in paradise we went to a baseball game in Minneapolis and I started to think, we needed a better team.  In 31 baseball games since 1977, I had never seen the Twins beat the hated (or loved) Yankees at home.  I was 0-31.  It was a painful, three stadiums of memories.  I had seen Reggie Jackson smack a monster homerun off the red scoreboard in right back in 1977 and then take a curtain call from the Twins faithful late in a game when I was 11 and then later, I saw Roger Clemons make one of his many “last starts” to beat up the Twinks and this year, my boys lost 7-2 in a very uninspired game.  The Twins fielded a team in September that consisted of 9 players that combined had hit 32 homeruns, one less than Giancarlo Stanton, the newest Yankee slugger that had hit 33 by himself.  Even the umps wanted to go home. In the seventh inning, he called a Twin batter out after a called second strike.  That is not something you see every day.  Even the Yankee catcher stood and patted the ump on the shoulder, after the batter looked confused at his early retirement.  The ump reversed his call and two pitches later, a soft line drive made the out “official.”            The next night, we went to Hamilton.  In some sort of technical problem, the doors remained closed for almost an hour while we felt like cattle stuck in a slaughterhouse.  Then we were let in to a performance by understudies and fill in talent.  It wasn’t a bad performance, but for $200, I expected more.  Alexander Hamilton was a self-righteous man who traded moving the capital to the South for nothing.  He claimed the moral high ground except that he was more immoral than most, having affairs and leading to his son’s death by dual, before his own.  Aaron Burr was not any better and in some respects, both should have never left that New Jersey field alive back in the day.  The dual should have been a tie where both lost.  I guess, it was something to do and oddly, the night we were at the play a few blocks from Target Field, the Twins beat up on the Yankees and the night before our night at the Orpheum, Hamilton was played by their main cast….oh well, the story of my life.            Our final weekend in camp featured a deck party hosted by us on our new "deck", that featured 50 guests and then on Sunday we sat on a neighbor’s deck to root for our side of the battle of the North, Packers versus Vikings.  
The rest of my family was in Lambeau rooting for Gang Green.  My wife brought purple and yellow chips to the deck party.  The game, never really ended as no one lost, or no one won.  Ties are like that.  In the end, the biggest loser was the Vikings rookie kicker named Daniel Carlson.  He kicked himself out of a job and two misses in overtime cost the Vikings a win.    He might have a “Viking” sounding name but the rookie was most recently at Auburn, Alabama and was from Colorado Springs, Colorado so in the end,  he wasn’t up to being a real Viking.             Much like the football game, the rest of what happened that weekend could not be properly described in writing, you just had to be there, so I will spare you the prose.            On September 17th, we drove down to Madison to see our son, Allwin.  Silja had never visited him in Madison, now in his second year of PhD studies at UW as it always seemed difficult for her to leave our daughter for a few days.  I stopped off at Necedah NWR to look for cranes and find a red headed woodpecker for “Project X” and we saw two cranes 10 miles west of the refuge out in a field, so not able to get them for my project, but found cooperative woodpeckers in the usual area.  Necedah is the easiest place to get this somewhat elusive woodpecker, I’ve ever found.  
There were trumpeter swans everywhere but there were also mosquitoes everywhere, even  mid-day in heat.  Brighid the dog was looking for any water she could find, and if it meant her falling off rip-rap, that was okay for her.
 Madison was still the same place I worked at back in the day as a Capitol page, but I never went to school here.  I was accepted to Medical School but I got such a recruitment to be an MD/PhD researcher here that it turned me off and I instead went to Minnesota.  This time, we walked around the campus and ate at the Terraces. 
I touched “Abe’s toe” on Bascam Hill for luck like I last did in 1984 before the Wisconsin State Forensics Championships.  That worked when I was a high school senior and my Demo speech on Ice fishing completed an undefeated year.  I guess it also worked this time, as we had a great visit with Allwin.  We miss him and he seemed to miss us, too.  We have thousands upon thousands of miles to go, so we need all the "luck" we can get.  We haven’t seen as much of him since he went to Europe to study in college and now, here.  Nine hours seems close but we never end up driving this way. 
We hiked around Lake Mendota, saw his lab, and then in between meals, while he went to an engineering class, we hung out at Barnes and Noble.  Maybe I’m writing about the wrong topics?
The weather is changing, and so after an all-too-brief visit we headed up the road to our next point of call.  We sort of left feeling like the football game, we hadn't won, nor lost.  It felt like a tie.  It was nice to be here, but sad to leave.  Allwin agreed to take the dog in February when we take this journey south to Uruguay on our way to points even farther south, so that was good.  It will be best to know that the family’s best friend is in good hands when we are off the grid in the South Atlantic. 
We love you Allwin!
Project X  9/17/201839.  Wild Turkey40.  Red-headed woodpecker

To Cross a Fox

Cross Foxes is a 5 star restaurant at the foot of a mountain in Wales that is apparently dog friendly.  It is called "a dining extravaganza in a fantastic setting."  Did I just return from Wales?  Did I visit my acquaintance Harry Holland, a famous artist in Cardiff?  Although, it seemed like I traveled 6 time zones, sadly, I have never been to Wales so the answer is "no."

But...I did experience a cross fox, the four footed critter.


The Cross Fox is a mutation of the red fox, mostly seen in the boreal forests on Canada.  This was where I was and as I sat in line at the Canadian Customs line, a cross fox came out of the forest to look at us and defying rules on cameras, I snapped a quick shot of the beautiful creature harvested for its unique fur.

It was a typical week of pike fishing, birding, and having an adventure.  There was a rare Greater Black hawk in Maine to chase but this trip had been set year's ago so there was no second thoughts on that, Ontario was on.  Not everything is birds.....so a seaplane awaited to take us northwest from Armstrong Ontario

On Sunday the 12th I luckily knocked off item #121 on my bucket list.  I drove completely around Smoothrock Lake, making a 35 mile or so odyssey in a 16 foot boat with a 20 horsepower motor,something I had never done since I first came there in 1982.  We caught some nice walleyes cruising around and saw some nice views.  It was my longest boat ride since 1991 when my wife and I crazily drove a 14 foot boat 100 miles down Lake Powell to see Rainbow bridge actually knocking off two buck list items, oddly both having nothing to do with the journey or the monument, and both incidental
#2 Catching a 1lb bluegill and #9 catching a 2lb crappie,both under the dock at the trail to the famous natural arch

Besides completing a life goal, I also caught some fish....
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I saw some birds
Gray Jay
Baby loon with parent
Ruffed grouse on a cabin roof
Red eyed vireo
I also saw some "good"bugs:

A common branded skipper
One of the northernmost  reported to the bug site, BAMONA
Aphrodite fritillary
I saw some fabulous scenery, before a nearby forest fire filled the air with burning smoke and making days seem like dusk and dusk resembling nights
Sea Monster Bay from my book..."Confessions of a Pike Whisperer" absent this year of anything scary including large fish
The falls on the west side of the lake

The falls on the east side of the lake at Funger Lake
Trophies were handed out:Unfortunately, none to me.  It was another year without hardware or prize money. Dr Jerry McCollough from Wadena, MN won the Stan Peer Trophy for winning the walleye challenge, catching the winning fish on his last fish.  2017 champion, Eric Thoreson of Rice lake, WI is handing him the trophy.

My boat partner Greg Peer bested my pike by over two inches to win the pike trophy, the 9th year of the last ten, the "pike boat" won the contest.with his second fish of the trip.  It was Greg's 3rd in a row, since we tied back in 2015.  Our boat caught 151 pike, down about 100-150 pike from a good year, due to the calm and the heat.


I ate some fine bush lunches:in remote spots, it wasn't five star like Cross Foxes, but my cooking was good, I gave it half a star because it was hot and generally we had something to sit onI made grilled cheese

Franks on Burnt Over Lunch island
There were woodchucks:
There were few blueberries on the bushes to pick again this year, but we got enough for pancakes
While I was out searching for warblers to photo on one of the too many hot and lazy days without fish, I stumbled upon a scene with a guide Greg Alexander and some of the camp help, tried to water ski.  One  looked to be almost drowning after starting well.



Another kid finally making the longest run possibly ever on the lake, and Greg gave him the thumbs up!  way to go!


Yet another great trip up above the tension line, hundreds of miles north of the 48th parallel in the land of the North....It wasn't Wales but oh Canada!  I think this is my 42nd up here. I could go for free in September but well,  I have other things to do, like fire up our new land yacht....
Olaf

A Glamping We Will Go!

Dan Lanik, a local artist in Wahoo, Nebraska  was moved when a local gang of utility workers cut down a huge pine tree and were just taking the log to the dump so he carved a bear holding a large pike.  He donated it to Nebraska and it stands at the entrance to Lake Wanahoo State park, guarding a lake with neither bears, nor northern pike.

I can feel this, I catch a record pike and some bear would sneak up and steal it from me, as we all know my relationship with bears.  I can picture me grabbing the fish from the bear...."give it back!"

We stopped in Wahoo yesterday on our way to Lincoln, Wahoo, what an odd name for a town...

Wahoo is defined as:
a)  A type of bush or shrub
b)  a fish of the mackerel family that can exceed 150 pounds
c)  A famous submarine sunk in WWII by the Japanese
d)  An exclamation said upon buying something cool or after catching something like this big fish

As I implied in my last missive, a life changing event was waiting for us in Lincoln, much like the scenes from "Yes Man." A Jim Carrey Movie.  We did not visit the sights in Nebraska's capital, however, because we were getting the three hour tour (remind you of something?)....we were getting the tour of our new....toy?  home?  What really is it?

You see Olaf is going back on the road, with Silja this time.  Bob Tiffin of Tiffin Motorhomes describes it perfectly with the motto of his company...."Roughing it Smoothly."

By 2pm,we signed the paperwork and we now own something made by Mr. Tiffin, a new 34 foot Allegro RED, a glamping (glamour- camping) machine that has its own laundry, household refrigerator,and four TVs, and an impressive 800 ft pounds of Cummings powered tourque .........so behold the behemoth.....



Truth be told, it was a little scary driving it for a while. Passing my first truck  carrying cut wahoo driving to Wahoo took a little nerve, but I survived.  The drivers between Lincoln and home survived.  It is big..so big...and there are 43 foot versions of this. We skipped the submarine memorial in downtown Wahoo, which is named for the bush and not the fish, which can actually swim faster than this land yacht can drive on a two lane road in most states (the fish and not the bush).

Buying this is a big deal, it scares us a bit.  We are not selling our house...yet.  The maiden voyage will be west in September, but we may have a few mini test trips before that, and then, let the glamping begin.  A cat and dog were freaked out inside it this morning in our yard.

We will have to christen the land yacht, but we have to figure out the name of her, something this big needs a name.....we will accept submissions.  Before that...

Wahoo!

Olaf

Summer Doldrums

The doldrums of summer have descended upon me like a curtain descends on a play for intermission, where I wonder if I should go grab a glass of wine, go to the bathroom, or go and make a phone call.  Like most Julys, I start pondering things—thinking, scheming, or finding things to amuse myself. Other years, I just sit out in the sun and work on my tan, or lack-there-of. Some years, I start a novel, either writing or reading one.  Almost all of the novels I’ve written were started in July.  Not this year and the one I’m trying to read, a history of the founder of Rolling Stone, I can’t get into.  It is hard for a Midwest boy to even understand either San Francisco or the Seventies.  I was too young to appreciate the Seventies, by the time I “woke up,” It was 1985 and the Baby Boomers had turned off the switch for the good times and conservatism and Reaganism were firmly in control.  I was 10 days old enough to be able to drink at 18, but that was a minor consolation.   I have an idea for a non-fiction research project but, ….yawn!  It is just too hot to sit in a museum and do research in Benson or Granite Falls, Minnesota.   Two dead congressmen will still be dead this fall when I’m more motivated.  I get into hobbies in July, but rare birds are few and far between. The pike don't bite well, although even a blind dog occasionally finds a bone.   The dickcissel have stopped singing, as had the snipe.  So these views from June are now fading memories. My local pair of red-necked grebes are leading their chicks around and although fun to watch, how many photos can a guy take?  
Generally, not much is moving and neither am I.  Usually, I end up photographing snakes, bugs, furry mammals, and occasionally sunsets.  Not that anything is wrong with that and it is about the only month I do it.
A white-faced meadowhawk gets chummy with a garter snake in Day County, SD

A red admiral lands on my wife, she is now blessed with good luck and  fortune

Mud-puddling Melissa Blues
We binge watch television series, like "Comedians in Cars having Coffee" with Jerry Seinfeld., but I won't say anything about that.There is a behavior I do in July that scares my wife.  As it is the time, I plot adventures.  My two big year projects were July ideas as were two company formations.  Mind you, they were profitable, but still, as they say, an idle mind is a Devil’s tool. A new lake cabin was thought of in July.  I buy things, sell things, and worse for my wife, I schedule things in July.  Even spending July’s in Europe, I schedule things.   “I wonder where that plane goes?”  These are never good words.   Largely, our kids were spared this as they spent July at Swedish camp, and it was being without kids that led to many adventures and many ideas.This year is no different.  Yesterday, I plotted something big.  Chapter 97, or something like that,  in Olaf’s life now has a title.   Where it will take us?  I don’t know, I never know.  The next adventure starts in Lincoln, Nebraska next Wednesday and I will leave you guessing.  A movie, I like, “Yes Man” goes to Lincoln, too, one of the few, and that ended both good and bad.   So be advised, Olaf IS up to something, something big.  That is next week’s story as Wednesday is coincidentally August 1st, and August brings action to Olaf’s July’s ideas.
Olaf

Birds in the Attic, Interesting Inheritance part I

Ladysmith  Wisconsin is a large small town in Northwestern Wisconsin.  It is the county seat of Rusk County and was platted in 1885 along the Soo Line main line, but was first named Flambeau Falls and four names later was renamed Ladysmith on July 1,1900.

I do not have any specific memories about Ladysmith. I never played them in sports and I never birded there.  I had a room mate from Ladysmith for a week during a leadership camp when I was 18, but other than that it is just a dot on a map, but one with some color.

It was back in  1926, when two loggers, Art Charpin and Walter Latsch,  were scared out of their wits on a February day. It was first told by a Rusk County weekly newspaper. The day started out innocently enough. The basswood had been marked by a timber cruiser for cutting and Charpin and Latsch were wielding the saw. They noticed a large hole in the tree some 30 feet above the ground, but they felled it anyway, figuring they’d get a 20-foot log out of it. The trouble started when they tried to saw through the trunk. The saw bound up against something hard. They came in from another angle. The saw again hit a rocklike center. At this point they were curious about a rock inside a tree, and turning the log as needed with a cant hook, they managed to saw all the way around the “rock” and pull the end of the trunk away. The wrinkled face of a man stared up at them. Shaking, they hightailed it back to town.

Eventually their story was believed and a party of four went into the woods to investigate. Sure enough, when the trunk was completely removed, they found the body of a man, fully clothed in coarse homespuns and buckskin, which fell away when touched. The head, covered with long hair, still wore a coonskin cap. With the mummified body the men found an old muzzle-loading flintlock rifle and a fancy muzzle-loading pistol. Pieces of paper found on the body at first seemed to identify the man as a Captain D’ Artagon who had been with the Marquette-Joliet party seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean in 1673. This seemed totally implausible, however, as the exploring party never came near Rusk County, and if the man had been lost, it is not likely that he would have continued to travel westward, away from the Wisconsin River. The finders of the grisly surprise finally theorized that the man, whoever he was, had been pursued by Indians, had taken refuge in the hollow tree, and unable to get out again, had died there. According to the Rusk County weekly, the body was supposedly shipped to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The two loggers vowed never to return to the haunted forest near Ladysmith.

Some how this story got forwarded by telegram and appeared in Duluth, Madison, Chicago, and within days, thousands began to appear at the Historical society in anticipation of the arrival of the "Petrified Man."  Unfortunately, this was always intended to be a work of prose, like the later War of the Worlds. The story just got out of hand
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The buzz around Ladysmith had died down by the next year, when unrelated, a worker at the Flambeau River Lumber Co.named Walter Evans fell off a scaffold at the mill and severely hurt himself.  After he healed up enough, he learned that he could  never work again.  Undoubtedly dejected and needing a way to support himself.,he carved a couple of duck decoys, and sold them. Then in a burst of entrepreneurial spirit, he formed the Evans Decoy Company in 1927 and bought a lathe machine from the Rhinelander Boat Company to make duck bodies as it had never been used for production.  Duck Decoy history began in earnest that summer and for six years some of the finest most desirable duck decoys were made. When Evans, got too ill to lead the employment of  six women making wooden ducks, his son in law, the local mortician, led the company until it closed in  1934 after just 7 years.

I was working on my Grandmother's estate this past week.


Packed away in large box, covered with "postage due" stamps, postmarked on my Grandmother's birthday, March 14,1972 and sent from somewhere in West Germany was a surprise.  The box was located in a closet no one ever visited and was a stash of old duck decoys I had never seen. In the middle of them, were three "field fresh" Evans Decoys classics.....


Birds with history.  I have no idea where they came from. They still even had their anchoring lines attached.   Did my grandfather confiscate them when he was a game warden in 1942? Did they buy them at an auction?  Certainly,they weren't sent to them from Germany in that box in 1972, but who knows?

Cool 90 year old rare decoys,with a mysterious past, but that is what interesting inheritances are. In my grandmother's will, the decoys go to my son Tyko, I hope his grandchildren don't find them in a box in 90 years.

Olaf

Skippering around in the Prairie

I posted a photo of a butterfly on Facebook last week without really looking at it and a good birder from Minnesota responded.  “Ooh wow!  That is a Regal Fritillary!”  I looked at it again, yea, he was right.  The Regal Fritillary is one of North America’s vanishing butterflies, now only restricted to tall grass prairies and lush meadows on states that border South Dakota, local colonies are common here but in the eastern US now, extremely rare. Today, I saw probably 300.
Northern State University in Aberdeen SD writes, “Regal fritillary populations have declined in the Midwest mainly due to the conversion of tallgrass prairies into cropland. Pesticides have also contributed to the species' decline. Large tracts of native prairie with abundant wildflowers are needed  to protect this beautiful butterfly. One such area is the Samuel Ordway Prairie near Leola, S.D., managed by The Nature Conservancy. The regal fritillary is a candidate for listing as a federally threatened species.”   To be honest...it needs to get in line.
I’m lucky enough to have large tracts virgin prairie near my cabin on Enemy Swim lake.  As the blurb from Northern State explains, this butterfly is being decimated my farming and pesticides, every swath of marginal farmland plowed up on the Coteau brings this gorgeous insect closer to not being with us anymore.
I may be primarily a birder but there is much on the prairie to see, and as I get older, I am realizing that butterflies are really cool.  It isn’t that I’m not trained in entomology.  It was a fun diversion to got out and photograph butterflies this past week.  I though, became entranced with finding something really rare,
Currently, South Dakota does have two species listed as threatened or endangered.  One is the small butterfly the Dakota skipper, and the other is the Poweshiek skipperling.  The little skipperling has not been seen west of Wisconsin since one was found near Brookings in 2008, the last one seen at Waubay NWR two years earlier, and for all purposes now it is considered extirpated in the state, so its designation as endangered in 2014 was too late for these bugs.  It still hangs on in isolation in Wisconsin and Michigan.  In my opinion, its days are numbered.
The first of July is an important day around the prairie.  It is the central day for the emergence of the other endangered butterfly, the Dakota skipper.  They only live for a couple of weeks and if you miss the flight, you out of luck for a year.  But there are other skippers that are similar, at least 8 of them.  Skippers are small, shy, fly low to the grass and are direct.  If they are not perched up on a flower, they are impossible to find.  I find myself using bins to search the tops of the flowers for bugs that are waiting for females to mate with.  

I sent some emails to birders I knew.in the eastern Dakotas...I asked them if they new of skipper prairies.  "Skippers?  Like in the insect?'  "One had never even heard of it.  Here we are people who walk in the prairies every week and we do not even know about our local endangered butterfly.  

It is hard to get excited about this bug.  It has little PR, and it was hard to find on the internet if any had even been seen in the last decade.  With intel scarce we looked up prairies that were being managed for the insect and they are few and far between but one was 15 miles away.

I ended up our near Summit SD, looking in a small piece of virgin, native prairie, there is little untilled or not over grazed even up here on the Coteau.  Barry my bider buddy tagged along.  We found skippers, some looked suspicious for Dakotas, and another was small and we had no idea what it was.  Soon we learned this was not going to be easy.  We identified a couple....

TAWNY EDGED SKIPPER
LONG DASH SKIPPER
Later, I brought my wife back to this prairie.  Then Silja finds a dead one standing on a flower later that evening.  I take it home, despite rules against collecting endangered insects without a permit.  In my eye it looks exactly like the insect on the Waubay NWR photo, 

So is it a long dash or a Dakota?  Eventually I take it to the biologist at the refuge who is unsure maybe a long dash, maybe a Dakota so she is sending it in.  She brought out their specimen collection and even then, identifying it seemed a bit hopeless, fritrating, or impossible.  I had added seeing a Dakota skipper to my lifelist and had called it, but now, I uncalled it.  
I also learn something, at least half of the photos of Dakota skippers on the internet are NOT Dakota skippers or at least not for certain Dakota skippers.  People reporting this bug are probably seeing long dashes.  I talk to a local bug expert on the telephone who says the prairie near my cabin might be the best one in the state for skippers so on July 9th, I went out for a last ditch effort next to my cabin.  The males should be dying off soon and so any longer and I will have to wait until late next June.
Two miles of hiking the prairie, I found ...another long dash skipper, the line on the wing is too long. 

then something entirely new

I could be wrong on this one but it looks like an Arogos skipper, a little smaller, yellow on underside and large bands on wings.  It also likes to keep its wings closed.....so, was I out of luck?
It is yet another skipper becoming hard to find.  Possibly on the way out of this world.
No, I wasn't out of luck....one appeared on a cone flower, shorter line, clean edges

I'm calling it....Dakota Skipper, rarest South Dakota butterfly and 450 yards from my deck.  All I can say is too many skippers to sort out, they all look the same.  I will add, the bug listers are a crazed lot.  
I did see some cool stuff  The prairie right now is incredible.  There are butterflies and other cool insects everywhere.  One of the best long grass prairies in the state is adjacent to my cabin.  There are cone flowers everywhere.multiple species of colorful butterflies



It is loaded with life and diversity.  As I said, it is also one of the best Dakota skipper prairies left on earth
Here are some of the sights.... enjoy!


BOBOLINK EATING SOMETHING
BEE ON A THISTLE
WE HAVE ALL KINDS OF BUTTERFLIES
AMERICAN LADY
MEADOW FRITILLARY
VARIEGATED FRITILLARY

MELISSA BLUE
COMMON WOOD NYMPH
CONE FLOWER
 GREAT SPANGLED FRITILLARY on milkweed
REGAL FRITILLARY

CLOUDED SULPHER
PRAIRIE THISTLE
 WOOD LILIES

ALL I CAN SAY, IS THAT I AM THE LUCKIEST MAN ON EARTH TO BE ABLE TO SEE THIS STUFF!

I do not think, though,  I could make a hobby out of butterfly photography.....skippers?  Next year, you need to come and try to see this bug, they may be gone soon.

Life is Good Today

In 2008, Country and Western singer Zac Brown, opened his catchy new single Toes

“I got my toes in the water, a$$ in the sand 
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand 
Life is good today Life is good today…”
Zac Brown didn’t invent this “philosophy” he just restated it eloquently.  It was “invented” by his co-performer, a now 69 year old barefooted man wearing hearing aides that on Saturday I paid $480 for two tickets to go see.  Jimmy Buffett is a marketing genius and one of my heroes.  He invented a philosophy of relaxation, enjoying life for what you have, and worry about tomorrow …well…tomorrow, because today…”it is 5 o’clock somewhere.”


 His concert was awesome, and I had felt I got my money’s worth and then after he was done  wooing us for an hour and a half, Don Henley of the Eagles stood on stage and said.  “We are going to play music straight for two hours and thirty minutes because…WE CAN!”  To the minute, Don Henley closed out the 5 hour concert singing “Desperado” a song saying that we need to go through life together…another piece of sage advice.  The Eagles learned that themselves that they are much better as a group than as a group of single performers.  After 14 years apart, they came back together.
I do not consider myself a Parrothead.  I wore flowers around my neck in a tropical print shirt but I just like the idea.  Yes I’ve owned and visited the islands and the Gulf, but even last week, I followed the mantra in Canada.  I headed north to Ontario to chase pike.  I had my toes in the water, maybe not certain backside parts in the sand, but life was good those days as I caught fish, watched some birds on gorgeous Smoothrock lake way north of Thunder Bay.  It would have been good with just a cold drink in my hand.  I took a morning off from even the sport of fishing and motored up to the cool “Hanging rock,” a geological oddity on that lake that is just cool.
The local herring gull colony gave us a break and largely ignored us as I reconnected with the place, and life, and just took a deep breath.  “Life is good” and it was a great day, even before two hours later, I caught the largest walleye I had since 2014, at 27 inches and had a great lunch with my loveable wife.
You see, the advice isn’t to go to Key West or Mexico.  You don’t really need to go to much of anywhere, even Canada.  This is July.  Go to Kampeska or even Thompson, Enemy Swim, Pickerel, or even Roy Lake.  You can even do it in your back yard.  Take a break, put your toes in the water and if you don’t have water, spray some water on the grass with your garden hose and put your feet in it.  You be surprised how good that feels.  You can even just close your eyes and think about it as Zac Brown sings in another shared song with Jimmy Buffett, Knee Deep:“Gonna put the world away for a minute
Pretend I don't live in it
Sunshine gonna wash my blues away…
…Got the blue sky, breeze and it don't seem fair
The only worry in the world
Is the tide gonna reach my chair
Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky
Never been so happy
Never felt so high
And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise”
Do it and do it often and have a great summer.  Jimmy Buffett is my guru, and Zac Brown and Alan Jackson are his disciples.  Wait, I think it is 5 o’clock…somewhere…I need to go.
Olaf

Birding and Fishing in the Boreal Forest

Smoothrock lake, Armstrong, Ontario Canada

Last week, I visited places known for their structural, geographic, or obvious features like the "Hanging Rock," the"Hump," the "Triangle," The "S-curve" "The backside," "The Corner" or the "Sandhole"  On the map names like "Lonebreast Bay" could be a name expected by a lonely hunter or trapper thinking of his woman he left behind.  There are places named for people who performed feats of fishing over the year, like "Wilbur's Run," "Bosak Bay" or "Docs Bay."  There is "Three Dead Guys Point"  named for a plaque on a rock for three dead guys, that I never met.  There is even the "No-fish Bay"  Then there are places that are named for mythology and legends,  "Seamonster Bay" fulfills this category, it is a story in a chapter of my birding/ fishing book.

Names aside it was a week of fishing with family and for me, surveying the birds up there.  Which itself was quite sad as the small common tern colony had disappeared from last year's survey.  They had been there since I first came in 1982 and every year since, never more than 12 pairs, the 5 pairs from last year were not found or even a single Common tern was seen all week.

I landed right in the middle of a Ministry of Natural Resources inspection.  I figured seeing the officers was normal as it seems they always stop to interview me as must just like to talk to me.  I've been told they find me entertaining.


"Beware of yellow planes!"  I have said before but none of the MNR wardens wanted to talk to me I guess as I hadn't even been on the lake yet and didn't have any news to share.  I kept trying to strike up conversations with them but they seemed distracted and not interested in idle chit chat.  Apparently, they had somewhere important to go, maybe somebody was doing something illegal.

Getting to or home from Smoothrock camp,  260 km North of Thunder Bay isn't so easy.  We had to wait for them to unload gasoline from the DHC-3 plane before we could get in.



Some of the birds:.

Northern Waterthrush.  The most waterthrush ever encountered.  Was averaging about 10 a mile with well over a hundred on Tuesday alone.
Ruffed grouse, had two hens with five chicks each walking around.
Ruffed grouse chicks
Nesting herring gulls, with eight chicks on the colony and still four birds on nests at the Hanging Rock colony.
Herring gull chicks

Canada jays (new name)
yellow-rumped warblers
Bald eagles


a good supply of common mergansers

Even found a record population of song sparrows
The first ring billed gull found in a decade was hanging out with the herring gulls.

I also found the usual winter wrens, boreal chickadees, assorted warblers, spotted sandpipers, alder and least flycatchers, vireos  of various stripes, broadwinged and a lone harrier, pretty much summed up the trip.  Unlike my fly-by reported whopping crane, I saw nothing "rare" but that is the way things go.
I got some butterflies
Canadian Tiger swallowtail

White admirals

I can't forget the bear, I always seem to have a bear find me

Of course there was fishing, but it wasn't so competitive, here I am with a trademarked Olaf's large pike, a modest 36.5 inch fish
My dad Doug watching the action at the dock at camp

daughter with a nice walleye

My niece Lil going butterfly hunting with me

What to do with small walleyes, kiss them for luck!

My sister, Jena wasn't kissing any walleye

My wife has a new fishing hat, love that hat, Silja!

I caught the biggest walleye...and I got some sun

my mom even found some walleyes near camp at a new point named "Sue's Point" 100 yards from camp

So it was a busy week being off of the grid.  The weather was hot at times but the day we got there a huge cold-front came through and dropped the water temp 8 degrees making fishing difficult, shutting down the pike fishing for the remainder of the week and scattering the walleyes for a few days and leaving most of them in the shallows.
Heck, it beat work
Olaf