Poor Gordon Howie. No, really, I mean this: I sympathize with Gordon Howie, who is seeing property he co-owns torn up by thoughtless motorists:
A few Rapid Valley residents are frustrated that freewheeling drivers turned the area near their neighborhood pond into a rutted mess this weekend.
Turtle Pond property manager and part owner Gordon Howie shares the neighbors' irritations but says the destruction is not a new problem for the undeveloped park, especially after a rainstorm.
"It's disappointing, but not a surprise," said Howie, a former state senator. "We've tried to put obstacles in the way, huge rocks and other obstacles to keep people off. The people who are intent on being destructive just find a way around them."
Although privately owned, the Turtle Pond area, at the corner of Long View Drive and Reservoir Road, north of S.D. Highway 44, is open for public fishing. South Dakota Game Fish & Parks has stocked the pond with fish in the past, Howie said.
Neighbor Pat Cromwell said she called the Pennington County Sheriff's Office four times over the weekend to report mud-bogging ATVs and pickups.
"They are ripping the daylights out of the pond here," Cromwell said. "People are having fun without thinking about what they are doing to it. It's mindless vandalism" [Holly Meyer, "Mud Boggers Making a Mess of Rapid Valley Pond," Rapid City Journal, 2012.04.16].
Attentive readers will recall that I'll have no truck with motorheads who can't have fun and tread lightly. Sportsmen (and I suspect we have to use the term loosely here) have an obligation to respect the land, whether that land is owned by all of us or by a few private landholders who generously allow public use of their property.
But note that even arch-Tea Partier Gordon Howie has to admit that sometimes he needs more government. It takes a strong man to admit that his philosophy is incomplete.
"It takes a strong man to admit that his philosophy is incomplete."
Typical simple minded Cory. Why can't you think beyond dichotomies? Why do you insist there are only two ways...no government or nothing but government?
about that nard kicking, steve....
I can be there in six hours. Meet me at the bottom of the ramp at the second Mitchell exit?
I'm driving a Volvo wagon.
If Howie's not calling for more government, is he calling for a militia?
Sad Larry, you don't understand that the government is to protect proerty rights of all, not take property from one and give it to druggies on welfare.
Really, Steve? Where in the entire article did it say the government was giving somone's property to anyone else?
This kind of crap is a real problem in the hills. Areas that are clearly marked with no motorized vehicle signs are regularly damaged by these jerks. I hope that the forest service and other authorities start to aggressively put up game cameras to get pictures of license plates and start handing out huge fines/seizing vehicles/taking away drivers licenses.
The soil here is clay heavy so when dry it makes a very nice road surface. When wet however, deep impressions are formed that stay for decades.
I am against all of these mud vandals everywhere. Mr. Howie, who has a pond, should have the same protections as everybody else who has a pond. The flowers and rare leaves that get wrecked grow back but the general mess and rutting and bogging gets way out of hand. I've seen it in the hills.
I still wish I had not wasted my money by donating to Mr. Howie's campaign of overgoding, but I would contribute what little I could to help with signage or catching these muddy buggers.
Idiots on 4 wheels do their best to rip up township roads in Tripp County whenever it rains or snow melts. As indicated those ruts in gumbo soil stay and erode. Township roads might get bladed once a year unless they happen to go past a township supervisor's farm or that of a county commissioner.
Your township roads get bladed once a year? Wow. Where I lived, they used to come by once every three years down the county roads. Moral of the story: Don't openly call the county board corrupt. Alternatively: Do call the county board corrupt, because they usually are, and someone has to.
We had the same problem, too, and this is eastern South Dakota. Anything that gets muddy is apparently considered great fun for some people, regardless of how much damage they cause.
I don't even take my bicycle out on muddy trails. Far too many people have an entitlement mentality: they think that because they have blown lots of money on off-road vehicles, they are entitled to drive those vehicles wherever and whenever they want.
Jana, interesting question. Gordon thinks the Second Amendment is the key to freedom. How do all the guns in his closet secure his freedom here?
Not all township roads get bladed period.
Last evening literally minutes after I made the previous post, I watched somebody in a 4-whl drive pickup drive through two mudholes on and alongside a township road west of here. Then turn around on the highway, and make another pass through the mud at higher speed. I did not see how many more times, but the road and ditches are a mess this morning.