Camp Ripley

Last week we made a little trip down to Camp Ripley, like 6 miles north of Little Falls, MN. It was kind of crazy cause I got to walk around the base with a blue mohawk!

We left on Tuesday, and had a little course on unexploded devices. From what I understood, don't pick them up, even if they are painted as duds. I say painted cause the company that makes the shells paints the live shells one color, and the duds another. Unless they run out of the live color. Apparently then they just color the live ones with the dud color (it happened, the guy told us). This is what the guy told us, "During a training exercise we were throwing cluster bombs out of the back of the Humvee" turns out that the company didn't know the serial numbers of the live ones that were painted the wrong color and the bomb squad people had to come out and detonate ALL the ones they had thrown. It cost the tax payers A LOT of money he said... Then we drove around at 25mph cause that is the speed limit throughout the 10 or so miles of the camp. All sand roads, and it was wet, so it was FUN driving!! :)

Wednesday sucked! Turns out I forgot to repack my rain suit after the rain in Ely. Guess what! It rained ALL DAY, and I got VERY WET, and I was not a happy camper. We put in a ton of shovel tests and walked over some of the "moderate probability" areas. Whoever said these areas had moderate probability should spend some time away from their desk and go out in the field. These areas surrounded two seasonal swamps. If you could camp next to a swamp that may or may not have water, and doesn't have any streams flowing into or out of it, OR camp on the Mississippi of any of the tributaries within a half mile of these crappy swamps, where would you camp?? NOT AT THE SWAMP!! Anyway, we called it a day a little early and checked out the local museum. I've been there before, but they still have a LOT of cool stuff.

Thursday was more shovel testing around a swamp, again, all negative. We found what Steve believes is an old logging camp. The other guesses were military based, or a CCC camp. The military didn't even know it was there! But they had these huge concrete bunkers built all around the berms that we found. A berm is the soil that was built up around the base of the walls to keep the elements out. We spent most of the afternoon mapping them out and searching other areas for historic remnants. We found more of those concrete bunkers, and a possible farmstead, but the farmstead is very questionable cause we didn't have very distinct berms to work with.

Friday it was crappy out again. It rained all day, but thankfully Steve didn't feel very well. So instead of working out in the rain we went to the Camp's museum. Again, a HUGE museum. A lot of vehicles, guns, medals, and history from the Civil War to Desert Storm. It was WAY to much to take in and read in one day. And we only spent like 2 hours there...

Overall it is another pointless job. Camp Ripley is crisscrossed with a ton of tank treads and bunkers and fields with no top soil. It has been a military camp since 1930, which has given them plenty of time to disturb the ground. But I get paid, and I will never forget my rain suit again!

Starting tomorrow I go to Bemidji for a week. Working on Diamond Point, where there are already two prehistoric sites. That means the chances of finding stuff is VERY VERY good. Like 95% + good...

Winton Hydro

Alright, so let me tell you about spending most of the week in Ely. I can't say the whole week because it was raining cats and dogs on Monday, so we didn't head up there.

What we were doing is monitoring sites. We measure adverse affects towards the sites. Two major concerns are erosion and human impacts.

Tuesday was a fun day, we drove up to Ely in the Subaru in the rain (wow is that a fun car to drive). So we spent the day driving around talking to people at historical societies and at Bois Forte band.

Wednesday was spent on the lake. It was warm and sunny, and a beautiful day to spend on the lake. We actually got some work done on the reservoir itself!

Thursday Don, our boat driver, had a couple doctor appointments. This means NO BOAT! So we drove around to a couple sites we could reach by land. Checked out a CCC camp and a sweet huge pavilion that was built by the CCC. We also went to the Cashaway site, which has a large waterfall on the way to the site. It wasn't cranking like it was last year when we were there, but when is a waterfall not sweet?

Friday was SHIT! Fucking 40 degrees! Out on the lake again, trying to beat the rain. Of course we couldn't, 40 degrees and RAINING! Most of the sites we visited were unable to erode because the shoreline is bedrock, so we only had to take pictures. That makes for a somewhat quick day, if it wasn't for the shitty weather. Did I mention that it was cold enough to freeze some of the rain? Yeah, sleet while on the boat and on the opposite side of the lake as the landing and truck....

Next week is mostly going to be spent in the office, even though we have a TON of shit to get done before the ground freezes! But we may spend a day or two in Ely again, along with possibly a day or two on Park Point on a project for the airport down there.

Rapid River Phase II

Well, spent the week in Baudette again. Let me tell you, it is not an exciting place to be.

It was a very slow week, we put in two units, and one was so disturbed that I might as well have been digging in a road bed.

In Unit A we found some ceramic, and some flat pieces of granite that look like ceramic. SO, some of the pieces might be rock and not pottery. Under that we found some lithics, all flakes, and nothing too exciting. Pretty much all that indicates is that people have been there before they made pottery, around 1,8oo-2,000 years ago.

Then we had an exciting meeting with a bunch of big shots from the regional MNDoT department out of Bemidji. We discussed where the new bridge was going and what, if any, impacts would take place to the site. Turns out they aren't going to do anything on the site, so we took GPS points around the site, every 10 feet, or like every 3 steps. It was a little overkill, but that is what they asked for.

Like I said before the second unit was disturbed as hell, and it doesn't really matter what we found because there is no integrity or context. We did find some big nails and some fence staples which was about as exciting as it got. We did put some cores in to see how deep it was disturbed, and after seeing that we called it quits.

Somewhere in there a lady from the county historical society stopped by to talk to us. She acted like she knew a lot, but after talking with her, she doesn't know squat. I found her ignorant or racist. She doesn't understand why native people don't live the way they did before the Europeans came over. In fact, she asked "Why don't the natives still make and use arrow heads?" Well lets see, if you could use a gun or a bow and arrow or spear in which you had to MAKE the point, which would you choose? And she got on my nerves so I asked her why Europeans didn't use them or snares or traps anymore. That shut her up quick.

Why do people think that natives are stupid? That sure pisses me off. They understood SO much physics. In order to create a point they needed to know how hard to strike the stone, at which angle, and then be able to know how everything is going to turn out so they can plan their next few moves! Come on people, Europeans aren't gifts from God.....

Anyway, off to Ely next week, on Birch Lake. A Minnesota Power reservoir. I may have internet, but don't count on it.

Till next week!