Staying Busy

Holy smokes have I been busy! I think the lack of sleep lately has been starting to catch up with me as well - believe it or not.

Last week I thought I was going to have a pretty slow week. As it turned out, that wasn't the case. Work had initially started the week planning on drilling a couple observation wells during the week, but due to a my boss having a death in the family we had to reschedule for this week. So instead of sitting at work all week with nothing to do, I went on a tour of the Nebraska Panhandle to explore the North Platte River and the irrigation districts which are diverted from the river.

If you thought that was a simple process - like I did - then let me tell you right now... YOU'RE WRONG! For the past week in the Kearney Hub the reporter that went with us on the tour has been running several articles featuring issues from the tour and they are not quick reads either. Water is big news! I could probably write a short book from everything I learned in three days, but I won't get into the details of the tour - how about the highlights!

The first day of the tour we drove from Holdrege to Scottsfluff - we found ourselves atop Scottsbluff National Monument by mid afternoon and enjoyed the views from above, even though the wind was a smidgen too cool. In the mean time we were viewing diversion dams on the North Platte River before hitting up a steak house for the evening in Scottsbluff.

Day two was nearly an information overload - but in a good way. We spent the entire morning viewing irrigation canals and learning the geography of the area. We drove from Scottsbluff to Bridgeport and then had a presentation at the community hall about supplying water from Wyoming reservoirs to Nebraska irrigation canals and understanding the complexity of the situation - especially in the current drought conditions. On our way back to Scottsbluff we did some more touring of the irrigation canal systems and made a stop at Chimney Rock - probably one of my favorite places to visit when it comes to Nebraska landmarks - mostly because of its history. We dined at another steakhouse in Gering and then retired for the night, all-the-while still dazed from everything we had heard from the day.

Our third and final day was capped off with a stop at Kingsley Dam overlook on our way back to Holdrege.Although the water level is looking dam low (pun intended) it is looking slightly better than last year, but only slightly. After three days cramped on the tour bus I think everyone was happy to be back home, but very happy to have taken a tour of the panhandle and understand the issues with the river water these days.

This week at work was a busy one as well. We drilled wells on Tuesday and Thursday - not stopping for lunch and every five feet we take core samples of the underlying geology. When you drill down 300+ feet that can become a real long day!

On top of work being busy this week, I made it to some basketball games on the evenings. The NCAA Division II Womens Basketball Championships are in town this week and those have been great to watch. Wednesday night the final game went to double overtime and finally ended around 11:00 p.m.. The Thursday night games were even better, those were the semi-finals, and I made it home around 11:45 last night. Needless to say, after I finally made it to bed around 1:00 a.m. I was a little unhappy when my alarm went off this morning at 6:45.

Yet, I have made it through the week and I am ready for the weekend! OH! I forgot to mention in my 'spare time' I have been doing a lot of apartment browsing and I think we might finally have something narrowed down. So hopefully we will have somewhere to move into when I move Laura back. I will be leaving for Montana next week for our final move... A little sad, but we can always take vacations and go back. We will just be happy to be closer to family and friends again more than anything.

That will do it for now. Until again

-=Nolan=-