Five Iowans (or now-Iowans) and one alien. Not a bad ratio, on a
weather-perfect Saturday here. Thanks again to Ken for organising this, and
of course for the espresso which rounded out the day. As with the two
previous times I've actually met list members, it adds a dimension or two to
the typists behind the hundreds or the thousands of e-mail posts. For the
better, of course...
Thanks to the group, and especially to our field-naturalist-for-a-day
Gordon, I now understand "prairie" a bit. I used to think it just meant vast
areas of flat grassland (or, in the case of "the Prairies", the space-filler
between Winnipeg and the Rockies), but now have a much better appreciation
for the terrain and the vegetation. I also now know that Iowa is not totally
flat; it was interesting on the drive from Cedar Rapids to Grinnell to see
first the flat and fully-farmed Iowa with few trees, then a quite hilly and
treed section with little farming, and then a half-and-half with some
rolling hills but farms still covering most of the land.
Oh, and we took some pictures. I'll have to see if I can get my Delta 100
processed this holiday weekend, and perhaps spend some time in front of a
monitor with my few digital images. (I have only a Krappy Kolour laptop -
ThinkPad T42 - while on the road these three months. Not much use
photographically.)
Canadian Michael, farther than usual from home
P.S. Not giving away any secrets, I think, to note that we were at:
- The remains of the old Spaulding Manufacturing Company [carriages, wagons,
automobiles] factory, in "downtown" Grinnell
- The Sugar Creek Audubon Nature Sanctuary, west of Grinnell on US6
- The Reichelt Unit of Rock Creek State Park, further west on US6
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|