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...