First Week in the Basin

5/21/2009
The Big Horn Basin, Wyoming is awesome. Despite the facts that my nose is incredibly sunburnt, I only have phone service when I sit like a dummy at the end of the ranch driveway, and I have never cursed dirt so much in my life…this place is awesome. (Not to say that I would really like the winter conditions here, but it could be doable.)

I have worked my first four days, but it seems like so much longer. This week I have done a lot of irrigation stuff, gated pipe, pivot, and wheel lines. I got to corrugate the corner of a field that was not reached by the pivot. By the way, corrugating is basically plowing up small lines along the slop of a field so gated pipes can be used to irrigate the land. Gated pipes being PVC pipes with rectangular holes cut in one side that release water. Corrugating is not as boring as some other tractor work, but you can see when you don’t get your lines straight with the corrugators. I also learned how the pivots work, their timers, operation, and how all the pumps work. There is a lot more to irrigating than I thought. I have a feeling that by the end of the summer I am really going to have a new appreciation for all of the rain that we get back in Arkansas.

I still am not use to it being light at 5 in the morning and 9 at night in May, it takes some getting used to. But I think I might be starting to like the cool mornings around 40, but I do miss the heavy dew that goes along with the humidity. I will really like to cool mornings just in time to make it back to Oklahoma for the 100 degree days.

Last night all the interns got together and investigated Hyattville. We went to the restaurant where they have pizza nights on Wednesdays. The special was shrimp and spinach, never tried that before. I opted for just the combo pizza with my meats, black olives, and mushrooms, much more appetizing. Then we scooted along to the bar that is next door where there was a mean game of cards in progress. Can’t remember the name of the game they were playing, but I had never heard of it. The people here are awesome, and pegged me from being from the South. Do I really stand out that bad? There is an intern from England who has been here since February. She is awesome and funny. She said she just wants to sit and listen to me talk? Weird or cool? I don’t know yet. Haha. So yeah, we covered the massive town of Hyattville and did all there restaurant/bar hopping there is to do.

Today I met my new love in trucks, 2008 F-550. I took a few cows and calves to the sale barn that was an hour away and that truck is gonna spoil me rotten. It was like I wasn’t even pulling a trailer. I thought it was really weird that they didn’t send me to town till 12:30ish, and the sale started at 11, and was almost over by the time that I got there. You think they would figure out that the calves should be at the barn before the sale starts, oh well I aint gonna complain. But it was pretty nice to drive up to the barn and see that all the cattle there were black. Well, it wasn’t really a barn. They had a shed for the auction ring and offices. But all the pens were uncovered. Guess that’s doable when there isn’t much rain and no humidity for the cattle to get over heated. Oh and, Worland, Wyoming is an amazing town to travel if you are towing around a stock trailer. All the intersections were plenty easy to turn in, there was parking along all of the streets, and the parking lots were all big and open for me to turn around a trailer. Wish the towns back home were spread out like that. You are lucky to get to pull a trailer to many if any intersections in most towns that size back home. Oh and, I had to stop by the tire shop and napa store while I was there, and had McD’s.

Well, tomorrow is my day off. I hate having to take days off, and they just happen to be working a herd of cattle tomorrow deadgumit. I still can’t adjust to the fact that I can have a day with no work and still have trouble finding things to do. But I would much rather take a day off than work 7 12’s every week, that would just be no fun. I am going back to Worland with the girl from England, she just happens to have the same day off and thought it would be fun to hitch a ride together since we both have to go to town for groceries. Well, I gotta get to my dishes. I am half way finished with Grapes of Wrath, I really should have read it in high school when it was assigned. Night!

More snow than I ever seen

5/16/09
I finally made it to Hyattville, Wyoming. After a long trip from Rapid City, SD I am ready for something to do. The trip ended up being 1400 miles. I woke up at 5:30 without an alarm (You have to keep in mind there is a time change, so it was really like 6:30), and the sun was already out and it was in the 20s. Again, I will have to get used to having a cool summer. I drove through Buffalo, WY to the Big Horn Mountains. I could see the peaks for a long ways off, and I just expected the snow to be way up there where no one drives. But I was wrong! The snow was on the shoulder of the road 3 to 4 feet high. They had got the snow off the main road but there where side roads that were buried under several feet of snow. I thought it was the middle of May, but I still saw more snow today than I have ever seen in my life. It was pretty neat to see all that snow and the fences along the road were buried and all you could see were the tops of the tallest posts. There was a lake in the middle of the mountains, but it is still completely frozen over and covered in snow. Then I came back down the mountains to get to the ranch and its pretty dry and there are lots of irrigated fields. Kinda reminds me of West Texas all over again. At least it’s not 100 degrees with a 40 mph steady wind.

I did figure out that I might not like it here in the winter. There are permanent road closed signs on the road all the way from Rapid City. I am not sure how I would take the roads being closed due to having so much snow. And along the road there are huge wooden barricades that catch the snow drifts to prevent it from piling on the roads. In the mountains I saw some buried in snow. These things are probably 15 feet tall. Kinda makes me not want to live here during the winter.

Well I have most of my things unpacked, and am stealing the internet from the neighbors. My drive way is all dirt, as are the rest of the roads in town. Two of the interns are already here, and one possibly two more are on their way. The guy and girl that are already here are from Michigan State. Guess those accents will be something to get used to as the summer moves on. Well I feel a good nap coming on. I will let yall know how the first week of work goes. I start on Monday but tomorrow I am making a trip to town for food. See ya.

It's all new to me

Alright, the next several posts are going to be on my summer in Wyoming. Because I will not have internet all of the time, I will just post whenever I get on.

5/15/09
I made it from Pleasant Plains, Arkansas to Council Bluffs, Iowa (just outside of Omaha, Nebraska) yesterday. The trip really was not bad. I made it through Kansas City without any traffic and made it to Council Bluffs right before traffic really got heavy. I thought it was funny when I crossed the MO-IA line that the town of Hamburg had no burgers, and with the abbreviation of Ia., it is spelled Hamburgia. It is like some foreign country or something. Yeah that is how bored one gets when driving nine hours by myself.

Today I made the long track from Omaha to Rapid City, South Dakota. Let me just say, I did not realize there was a difference between Sioux City and Sioux Falls. After looking for I-90 in Sioux City, I now know the difference. Talk about a change in terrain. I went from the crop land of Western Iowa to Mt. Rushmore, SD. The landscape change in South Dakota at the Missouri River is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen. The terrain change to rolling plains is amazing. Then I drove through the Badlands and that was awesome too.

I got to Rapid City at 2:30 Mountain time (I have having to go through this stupid time change) so I decided to drive to Mount Rushmore which is only 30 mile southwest of Rapid City. I have not ever been to a national monument so this was my first. It was AWESOME. I took some pictures, which I have posted on Facebook. I was able to walk right up to the base of the rock pile underneath the monument. It was a little chilly up there, but I guess I am going to have to get used to that in Wyoming. However, a cool trail goes around the place for different views of the monument. There was one of the compressors powered by the local power company, and used to power the jackhammers when making the statues. There was a story about how the compressors worked and how the men would check the pressure in the lines running up the mountain. Every Monday morning there was a decrease in pressure and the workers could not figure out what was happening. Well the story turns out that all the women in the town at the bottom of the mountain did their laundry on Monday mornings and ‘they all had electric washing machines.’ I thought it was kinda comical.

Well I am here in Rapid City, and will leave first thing in the morning for Wyoming. The state line is only 60 miles away but it is a 5-hour trip to Hyattville, through Gillette and Buffalo. I really hate that I have not had much phone service today, and it probably will not get any better tomorrow. I am kinda disappointed that I will miss the Preakness this weekend and the whole summer of Nascar, guess I will have to catch up at the end of the summer. After seeing the landscape of South Dakota, I cannot wait to see what Wyoming holds for me! Well I am off to get some sleep!