It hit 105°F today while I was driving back to the motel. Some fairly gnarly clouds are building so there may be a cooling t-storm but nothing shows on the forecast.
We got up early, got coffee and went directly to the conference -- the Mexican Coppersmiths were starting to make some vessels -- gorgeous work with simple homemade tools. I am taking a bunch of photos and will start to post them in a day or two. Spent some time wandering around, got lunch and went to the nice dog park.
There is a plant that we both noticed and really like but we couldn't get a name for it -- there is a local Thursday Farmer's Market and we saw a booth with it for sale -- turns out it is Russian Sage. Looks perfect for landscaping at the farm. Looks vaguely reminiscent of Lavender but grows to four feet tall and bushy.
Dropped Lulu off at the motel and I went back to the conference, hung out for a bit and went to the South Dakota School of Mining and Technology for a scheduled tour of their Metallurgy department. There are only seven schools in North America that teach the full range of Metallurgy -- all the rest have devolved into 'materials science'. This place covers the gamut from ore fresh out of the ground to the finished product. They are very well funded both by industry and by government for targeted and pure research. This is one of those places where I would love to spend a year just walking the corridors, knocking on doors and asking: "Watcha doing?"
The guy that developed arterial stents was a graduate. They also do a lot of work on biocompatbility of materials for medical applications -- I am sure happy with the couple pounds of titanium in my hip and it was fun to see the place where the basic research was done.
Also went through the museum of Paleontology -- they have a very nice fossil collection. The South Dakota badlands is a rich source of fossils.
Taking a nap, get some dinner and back to the conference -- hope the temperature breaks a bit...
