< FLIGHT OF DISCOVERY >

DAY 8 - June 8, 2004
Children demonstrate they are the scientists of the future

Following another beautiful sunrise at the airport in Mandan, ND, the crew of Flight of Discovery took off on the next leg of the journey to the Pacific. The flight plan had us making a stopover in New Town, ND, which is on Mandan tribal lands. Two Trunks of Discovery had been sent out to the children there. We met with the children, and one of the Circle of Tribal Advisors, Amy Mossett, and the scientists gave talks on the items in the Trunk of Discovery.

The crew then moved on to Wolf Point, MT, after a fuel stop in Williston, ND, where they were met by another group of very excited children, who had also received a Trunk of Discovery. The kids had collected a lot of sampls of geology, botany, and zoology already. The scientists on the expedition were very pleased.

Flight Operations
Sciences
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Cessna Flight Operations

Weather

New Town, ND (05D)

47^o 58.02'N
102^o 28.68'W

Runway 16/30
Length 3000' x 50'
Elevation 1925'

Visability = 10
Scattered ceilings, grey skies, light drizzle
Temp 7

Williston, ND (ISN)

48^o 10.68'N
103^o 38.54'W

Runway 29/11
Length 6650' x 100'
Elevation 1982'

2033 Z / 4:33 PM Local Time
Winds variable 13 KTS

2400' scattered
10,000' broken
Density altitude 1700'
Wolf Point, MT (OLF)

48^o 05.67'N
105^o 34.50'W

Runway 11/29
Length 5089' x 100'
Elevation 1986'

2232 Z Time
Winds 110/04

Visability=10
11,000' scattered
Density altitude 1800'
Temp 11/ Dew point 7

Expedition Leader's Notes
Up before daylight to the sound of voices and a car alarm. It was election day in Mandan... the FBO was a polling area... and apparently, democracy never sleeps.

We showered next to voting booths… no electronic ballots here… and generally had a great time talking to the locals (no politics, though). We gave out buttons and medallions to the poll workers… voted early and voted often.

Bought $190 worth of elk steaks for dinner in the evening at Wolf Point... our next overnight. Put the meat in the Expedition and headed for New Town. Was the first to try a grass field take off at high density altitude; radioed back for others not to do the same so everyone but the Caravan opted for the asphalt.

Overcast when we arrived at New Town. Roger and I were the last to arrive and had heard on the Unicom that there was no one there to meet us as expected. That changed as soon as I landed when Amy Mossett showed up with her van and cell phone. Within minutes we had about fifty kids, their parents and other assorted visitors from town climbing through our aircraft and generally having a good time in spite of the rain and cold.

Cathy and Kevin McPhillips - the sponsors of the Trunk of Discovery for New Town - drove in from their circuit vacation of the Northern Plains and joined Amy for a scenic flight with Chin in the Bell 206.

We were invited into the elementary school in town for lunch and exchange of gifts. I'll write much more about this day when we expand our journals for publication, but suffice to say that wonderful people of the Hidatsa-Mandan-Arikara are just as hospitable today as they were 200 years ago. It is also instructional to note that they were growing agricultural crops here 1,000 years before Lewis and Clark and will probably be doing so 1,000 years from now. Change is a relative thing.

New Town was one place that I think everyone on the crew would say they would have liked to have spent a lot more time. Amy invited us back in August of 2005 for their big bicentennial commemoration - we'll be there, I'll bet. I also invited Amy to come along with us both in 2005 and again in 2006 when we make the great transit from Astoria to Washington, DC and I hope she takes us up on the offer. I have a enduring vision of her waving to us on takeoff with my son, Lee taking soil samples before hopping in his aircraft for Wolf Point, MT.

With Mike "the Caravan" Mann we flew along one of the most beautiful stretches of the Missouri… high enough for safety, but with cameras trained lower to catch the pelicans and sand bars beneath us. We joked that we could read the "Beechnut" on the fishermen's hats... but that was really with our telephoto lenses, and not really, then.

Met at Wolf Point by Don Horsman and the kids from two elementary schools and every one of them got to go up in an aircraft. Those that had worked harder on the Trunk of Discovery got the helicopters, but overall, their collections and observations for the TOD were the best that we've seen so far.

After the elk steak dinner, prepared with a dash of Vermouth by Rob and Andy (be sure to check out our upcoming cookbook of the FOD) most folks opted to stay in town at the Heritage and I gave the Expedition a bath.


	Zoology Once on the ground we were in the last plane at Wolf Point, MT to see the 30 to 40 kids waiting for us. The kids had really done a great job. They had collected rocks, plants, fossils, and took pictures of the reptiles, insects, and animal tracks. It was the best yet. Animals Observed: white tail deer, American white antelope, herring gull, black-legged Kittiwake

Anthropology
Foods of Lewis and Clark
One of the highlights of the trip for me as the food historian was the opportunity to see and taste one of the native foods, prairie or white turnip that Lewis and Clark ate with the Native Americans. The school children at New Town picked it when they were collecting local plants for their Trunk of Discovery. One of the students passed around a plate of raw prairie turnip for us to taste. It has a chewy texture and a milder flavor than turnips.
In addition to collecting wild plants for food, the Affiliated Tribes are continuing to cultivate the beans,
corns, squash, and melons that the Mandans were growing at the time of the visit of Lewis and Clark. The beans, corn, and dried squash, provided by the Mandan tribe, enabled Lewis and Clark to have food to supplement the game they could hunt during the cold winter they spent with the Mandans and gave them supplies to take with them in the spring as they proceeded west.
The prairie turnip, Psoralea esculenta, was eaten raw or cooked in stews. The tops of the prairie turnips were braided similar to the way we braid garlic before being hung to dry.

Prairie Turnip was one of the foods that was harvested by the Mandans to sustain them through the winter, and still grows today.

Geology
This day was an unexpected geology bonanza. We had a very tight schedule, because we were meeting with students at the New Town Elementary School on the north, upstream shore of Lake Sakakawea. Although flying in the Hughes helicopter, we weren't going to have the opportunity to make many landings. This was an interesting area geologically and historically since Lewis & Clark first observed coal beds near Mandan. The copter was running low on fuel so we had to land to fuel up. Once fueled we flew over a coal strip mine. The coal is used at a nearby power plant to produce electricity and also converted into gas. We
returned to following the lake upriver and noted coal seams present on its southern shoreline. The other copter radioed us that it too was low on fuel. Both copters were going to land together at the school, so it gave us time to check out some rocks on the lake's north shore. The rocks consisted of the Sentinel Butte Formation, containing shales, sandstones and coal seams that were deposited on a delta about 45 million years ago. Fossil leaves from trees similar to those that grow in the area today were present in the shales. Other fossil leaves were of plants that no longer grow here. The shales also contained some horsetails, which are very ancient plants that still survive today. The sandtones contain concretions

similar to those observed at Cannonball Creek the previous day, but they were much smaller. These ranged in size from flattened golf balls to a basketballs. There were also orange rocks in the bluff. These rocks are known as clinker. Clinker forms when fires burn the coal. The fires also bake the surrounding layers of shale. The fires occur both naturally through lightning strikes and set by man. Lewis & Clark noted clinker floating in the river and thought it was pumice, believing incorrectly that a volcano must be nearby. We were greated by the studnts from the New Town School. We described the local geology and the tools in the Trunk of Discovery they could use to identify rocks and minerals. We received our first rock and fossil specimen on the trip from a 3rd grader at the school. After our meeting we continued west to Williston. There we noted the badlands and oil wells that pump oil and gas from the Nemaha Arch. We landed in Wolf Point to an excited group of school children. A fifth grader there had worked very hard collecting rocks for us to identify. It was a very enjoyable day working with the children. A discussion with teachers at the school indicated that dinosaur bones were present in the local rocks and digs were occuring near Fort Peck. I thought maybe tomorrow I would travel with the the ground crew so I could get a glimpse of these giant creatures.


	Anthropology Foods of Lewis and Clark One of the highlights of the trip for me as the food historian was the opportunity to see and taste one of the native foods, prairie or white turnip that Lewis and Clark ate with the Native Americans. The school children at New Town picked it when they were collecting local plants for their Trunk of Discovery. One of the students passed around a plate of raw prairie turnip for us to taste. It has a chewy texture and a milder flavor than turnips. In addition to collecting wild plants for food, the Affiliated Tribes are continuing to cultivate the beans,		corns, squash, and melons that the Mandans were growing at the time of the visit of Lewis and Clark. The beans, corn, and dried squash, provided by the Mandan tribe, enabled Lewis and Clark to have food to supplement the game they could hunt during the cold winter they spent with the Mandans and gave them supplies to take with them in the spring as they proceeded west. The prairie turnip, Psoralea esculenta, was eaten raw or cooked in stews. The tops of the prairie turnips were braided similar to the way we braid garlic before being hung to dry.


	Geology This day was an unexpected geology bonanza. We had a very tight schedule, because we were meeting with students at the New Town Elementary School on the north, upstream shore of Lake Sakakawea. Although flying in the Hughes helicopter, we weren't going to have the opportunity to make many landings. This was an interesting area geologically and historically since Lewis & Clark first observed coal beds near Mandan. The copter was running low on fuel so we had to land to fuel up. Once fueled we flew over a coal strip mine. The coal is used at a nearby power plant to produce electricity and also converted into gas. We		returned to following the lake upriver and noted coal seams present on its southern shoreline. The other copter radioed us that it too was low on fuel. Both copters were going to land together at the school, so it gave us time to check out some rocks on the lake's north shore. The rocks consisted of the Sentinel Butte Formation, containing shales, sandstones and coal seams that were deposited on a delta about 45 million years ago. Fossil leaves from trees similar to those that grow in the area today were present in the shales. Other fossil leaves were of plants that no longer grow here. The shales also contained some horsetails, which are very ancient plants that still survive today. The sandtones contain concretions


	similar to those observed at Cannonball Creek the previous day, but they were much smaller. These ranged in size from flattened golf balls to a basketballs. There were also orange rocks in the bluff. These rocks are known as clinker. Clinker forms when fires burn the coal. The fires also bake the surrounding layers of shale. The fires occur both naturally through lightning strikes and set by man. Lewis & Clark noted clinker floating in the river and thought it was pumice, believing incorrectly that a volcano must be nearby. We were greated by the studnts from the New Town School. We described the local geology and the tools in the Trunk of Discovery they could use to identify rocks and minerals. We received our first rock		and fossil specimen on the trip from a 3rd grader at the school. After our meeting we continued west to Williston. There we noted the badlands and oil wells that pump oil and gas from the Nemaha Arch. We landed in Wolf Point to an excited group of school children. A fifth grader there had worked very hard collecting rocks for us to identify. It was a very enjoyable day working with the children. A discussion with teachers at the school indicated that dinosaur bones were present in the local rocks and digs were occuring near Fort Peck. I thought maybe tomorrow I would travel with the the ground crew so I could get a glimpse of these giant creatures.