WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES

Friday after school we busted out to Milwaukee in a  snow storm that rolled through the area.  20 + cars in the ditch on the way into the city.  The worst was on the belt line in Madison,  she banged off the bridge in the left hand lane and caromed off and into a deep ditch on the right hand side, right in front of us.  Thankfully we made it in, in just under 5 hours, normally about a 3and 3/4 hour trip.

Off to the Milwaukee airport early on Saturday and on the plane to Phoenix for a short lay over, the another 5 hrs to Maui.

A long walk for Kendo, then we caught a sky cab with the Dale Earnhardt of the Phoenix airport.

 The flight was a great time to catch up on some reading.  My choice was Where the Sky Began, Land of the Tallgrass Prairie,  by John Madson 

Madson describes how prairie developed as the glaciers receded, and the reasons why prairie initially advanced eastward but forest did not advance westward (soils, light, moisture, temperature); but that more recently that advance may have been checked and reversed were it not for the plow.   

 In succeeding chapters, he describes why prairie forbs and grasses are so tough (deep root systems, reinforced cell walls) and pervasive (wind and insect pollination), the roles of fungi, bacteria, earthworms and small animals as well as large animals and birds, the quick-changing and often dangerous weather, the hard lives of the prairie pioneers, and contemporary efforts to restore destroyed prairie. 

 It was a great read as I looked out the window of the plane as we flew west observing the geology of the land.  His stories of the lives of the pioneers and the animals that once roamed the Iowa landscape and the men who hunted them made me think of the hunts of my father and grandfather, when game was plentiful.

Just a day later and were on a tropical island with a natural history all it's own. 

The Hawaiian Islands, thousands of kilometers from a continental land mass, support a complex system of plants and animals.


Time and extreme isolation were essential for the development of Hawaii's unique native life. Isolated from the remainder of its kind and living in a strange environment, a small breeding population is especially subject to evolutionary development. In some instances, changes have been so pronounced that it is difficult, if not impossible, to trace ancestries to continental forms.   Even though we're staying at a GREAT resort, I'm looking forward to exploring the back roads, beaches, volcanoes, forest and cool digs on the island.  A little holoholo.