Long drive ahead of us! We departed from North Dakota early in the morning, about 7am, and we actually decided to drive straight home after a major setback.
Our back tire blew out while we were driving at 67 mph on I-94! Luckily Prof. Gulezian, who was driving, was able to control the bus (that was swerving left and right!) and steered it over to the shoulder. It was quite a scare, but thankfully we’re all safe! After that we decided to drive straight home, and I thank Profs. Bowen and Gulezian for driving throughout the night while we slept in the back!
While we were waiting for the bus to have its tires changed, however, we decided to botanize a bit as there were at least 5 different plants on the shoulder grass. Amazing how we notice things when we stop to observe them! From afar (or before this course and trip), I would have called everything “grass,” or “grass with some other plants.” It’s good to see more clearly!
In any case, one of the plants we’ve found was Common Milkweed, or Asclepias syriaca, from the Dogbane family (Apocynaceae). I remember back in Blue Mounds when we found two milkweed beetles mating. One of our first sightings of beetle relations, much more common after Specimen Ridge.
Journal entry by Deborah
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