Up early and in the van by 7:40. We arrive at 8:05 at the NRCS office. We are followed by Iowa State, South Dakota
State, and Nebraska. The four teams from
our region are all early birds. The 20
van caravan leaves the NRCS building at 8:40 and after a 20 minute delay due to
road construction we arrive at the local Boy Scout camp that is about 15 miles
from the NRCS office. The contest gets
under way shortly. Coaches get to take a
few pictures but eventually we mosey back to our main building we will use for
grading. We inspect the official score
cards and prepare for the first batch of cards.
We have about 25 people grading.
There are 60 cards that arrive in each batch and we are able to finish
them in about 30 minutes. This works our
great as we finish each of the four batches and at 4:00 pm the contest is over
and the cards are graded. The students
walked back to the sites and listened to a discussion by Jim Thompson the
contest organizer and a few other coaches about the reason they called that
site a summit. I guess some of the discussion got a little
heated, but I only have that second hand. The contest sites were a Fragiudult, Hapludult and a shallow Hapludult.
The students soon arrived and we headed back to town. We cleaned up and picked up Tom who had a
busy day doing calculus homework. We filled him in on all the adventures that happen when 12 big students enter a soil pit, intent on collecting soil samples from the same area. At 6 we
went back to the Kenyan Restaurant and enjoyed another meal, with some spice
tea and Mandazi Bread (Sweet African pastry made from wheat flour then fried in
olive oil) or Chapatti, a flat bread.
Tonight I had organic beans and rice with Matoke. We stopped at the Kroger store on the way
home to re-supply the travel snacks for tomorrow night. We have to leave at 6:50 tomorrow morning so
we need to get to bed early for good night’s sleep.
