Cousin Ruth and the Stone Bones

Years ago, Ruth discovered fossil camel and rhinoceros bones exposed in a mound in western Nebraska. This was no idle claim: the bones were properly identified, catalogued and displayed at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln with full credit given to the finder. Yesterday, we returned to the site of her discovery.


A Brule clay mound rose about 100 feet above the surrounding terrain. Ruth said the fossils she found were "just lying on the ground." I was incredulous. "A tooth was exposed, and then we dug out the jaw." The mound was located about two miles north of the North Platte about 200 feet higher than the current highwater mark but still well within the wide valley the river has cut over eons. The ground was littered with smooth, flat granite and basalt stones which had been carried from the mountains several hundred miles to the west and then deposited here when the channel shifted south.



William, Ruth's son, made the first new discovery. It was a rib fragment which "chinged" when he tapped it against another rock. He thought it was metal and was prepared to discard it. Soon his brother Edward found some fossil bone fragments. They were indeed just lying on the ground. They were near the top of the mound and somewhat protected by thick slabs of limestone which originally capped the oligocene clay mound and inhibited erosion. The age of clay suggests the bones we found protruding from it were 25-30 million years old.

Matt from Galesburg

Matt climbed into the Hertz Subaru Outback outside Hot Springs, South Dakota. He was on his way to New Mexico via the Four Corners and Grand Canyon. Originally from Galesburg, Illinois, he has worked as a day laborer and made his home in Texas, Florida or on the road. When I met him, he was seeing "a bit of the country."

If he still had his scooter, I would not have met him. It was impounded in Florida. Matt was passionate about scooters. He could get over 100 miles per gallon. He had traveled from Texas to Illinois on about six gallons of gas. He could carry his pack on the running board. He had nothing good to say about the police, especially the police in Louisiana. They harassed him and confiscated his scooters; his driver's license too. He was on his way to New Mexico because he had heard it was easy to get a new license there.

Matt's backpack was stretched drum tight. He claimed it weighed 100 pounds. Having seen the effort required to heft it, I had no reason to doubt that figure. He carried his life in that pack. He had foot long spikes to secure his tent and a hatchet to cut firewood.

He was dressed in shorts, heavy boots and wore a camouflage baseball cap. On the road, he was called Willy for obvious reasons; he even had the ponytail. He was lean and tanned like a Gulf Coast fisherman. He had professional tattoos on his arms and chest and amateur ink on his fingers. He complained that he could no longer hike 20 miles with his pack due to a bad back.

We crossed the North Platte in Bridgeport, Nebraska and stopped at Runza for a late lunch. He remembered having something like a Runza in LA about 20 years ago. It was a calzone. I had wolfed down half my Runza before I noticed how slowly and deliberately he ate. We returned to the bridge over the Platte and I dropped him off; 140 miles closer to the Grand Canyon than he had been a couple hours earlier. He would make camp under the bridge.

Matt turned 49 last week; he was born on June 18, 1959.

Breakfast at Bully's

Presidents are a big deal in Rapid City. Bronze statues of greet pedestrians in the historic district. At Mount Rushmore, Teddy Roosevelt may literally be in the shadow of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, but he is remembered with exceeding warmth in town. Bully Blends Coffee & Tea Shop is a case in point.


For breakfast I had an excellent Bullrito. Offering a half portion was a fine idea because it allowed me to rationalize the purchase of a dangerous Bullrownie. (You can't be too careful when venturing out across the high plains.) Everything is made in house and the staff is gracious to a fault.

Granite Faces in the Black Hills

A Glass of Your Own

Barely Blond might describe the woman behind the bar or the draft she drew from the keg. Tonight the Firehouse Brewery had five of their own craft brews on tap. The jolly couple to my right proposed the Blond and Megan, the bartender, seconded the motion. Barely Blond was a voluptuous ale: great body with Eastern European hop sass. If I were a local, I would have enjoyed it in my own numbered glass.

Sullivan's Brontosaurus

Jurassic Park reinvented dinosaurs. Before Steven Speilberg brought them back to life, however, they were dusty skeletons in natural history museums or Emmit Sullivan sculptures in South Dakota's Dinosaur Park.

Dimetrodon


Sullivan rendered tail dragging, reptilian behemoths life size in concrete over steel mesh and then painted them bright green. Today they look cartoonish, but I suspect that has more to do with what has happened to dinosaurs over the seven decades which have passed since Sullivan and his WPA crew were at work.



The fate of two iconic dinosaurs, brontosaurus and trachodon, tells part of the story. They were demoted. Brontosaurus has been reclassified as Apatosaurus; Trachodon is now Hadrosaurid. Both were the creations of early bone hunters. Later research has shown they were cobbled together from two or more creatures. But they captured the imagination and became real for generations of enthusiasts.

Trachodon and Brontosaurus


Paleontologists have a much deeper understanding of dinosaurs now than they did in Sullivan's time. The closest living relatives of dinosaurs, we are told, are birds, not reptiles. Most probably were not green; they probably did not drag their tails. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they were survivors and ruled the planet for over 100 million years. Only recently did we learn their tenure was abruptly terminated when the Earth collided with a very large rock (estimated to be about the size of Mount Everest) 63 million years ago. Otherwise, they might still be in charge.

Stegosaurus


None of that serious scholarship detracts from the charm of the Dinosaur Park. Sullivan's sculptures will continue to inspire. Kids at least. Riding Triceratops beats peering at presidents on Mount Rushmore any day.

T. Rex and Triceratops

Fin Special

Escolar is surfacing everywhere. Nick Macioge is making it into his special white tuna roll at Fin in Lenox, Massachusetts. But the best thing about this roll is not the fish, it is the jalapeño salsa. Minced peppers, onions, lemon, lime and olive oil. According to Nick, the key to controlling the burn is to use peppers with uncracked skins. Next time I will try it on tuna tuna.