Sunday, May 13, 2012 - Woodward OK
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BYOW, Blue West Boat Launch, Lake Meredith National Recreation Area, Fritch TX, May 12, 2012
BYOW
As I mentioned yesterday, Lake Meredith is nearly dry, and has been for years. Here's a view of the, ahem, lake from the Blue West boat launch.
I was going to stay here another night but got bored and moved on...
Night camp
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Woodward OK
Woodward Walmart Supercenter Store #150, 3215 Williams Ave, Woodward, OK 73801 - (580) 254-3331
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone service- Extended Network
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - via Extended Network, signal varies, slow
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the Woodward OK area
- Check the weather in Woodward OK
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.