If you’re planning to attend the grand opening of the water park at the Spearfish Recreation and Aquatics Center  (Saturday, May 23 @ noon) you may want to bring your ice skates along just in case. With the way the weather has been acting up lately, we may be left with an ice skating park instead of a recreational water park!

If you’re attending the grand opening, don’t forget to bring one non-perishable food item per person to be admitted for free.

Get ready for some major fun in the Sun…that is, if the winter weather stays away!

Rec Center Membership Prices and Plans (pdf)

Spearfish News delivered right into your Facebook News Feed!

This new service offers a Spearfish News headline or two per day delivered conveniently into your Facebook stream. Think about it: You spend countless hours checking out the latest on what’s going on with your friends, why not find out what’s going on in your own community?

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Check Out Spearfish News On Facebook Here

Most Spearfish residents are pretty patient. For a demonstration of this extraordinary patience, head over to Exit 14 (Wal-Mart Exit) and observe the drivers navigating their way through the blinking red lights. One-by-one, these patient souls take turns going over or coming off of the overpass. It’s slow, agonizingly slow, especially during the heavy traffic hours.

Now and then, the traffic lights at the Wal-Mart Exit are turned on. This is when the patience runs thin. Some folks are seen deliberately running the red lights while others are seen taking a quick nap or walking down to the gas station for a refreshment before it’s their turn to finally move forward.

“Massive lines of cars form and twist into knots when the traffic lights are turned on over at the Wal-Mart Exit in Spearfish.”

The South Dakota Department of Transportation designed the intersections and manages the traffic lights at Exit 14. The City of Spearfish is doing what it can to get the SDDOT to fix things properly. The SDDOT claims to be monitoring local traffic patterns in order to optimize for best results, but the question among locals still remains after many long months of patience: “What the **** is up with the traffic lights at the Spearfish Wal-Mart Exit???”

Please voice your opinion in the comments section below.

Despite the fact that Spearfish doesn’t have enough money to clear snow, the Meier land purchase appears to be a wise idea. 

Developers have been salivating over the land for decades, but thankfully the city will have first opportunity to buy and develop it into an oasis of community learning and enjoyment – not too far from the community Rec Center. If done properly, it could really be an amazingly attractive area of the city.

This will take a bit of time and there will be snags along the way, but in the long run the wisdom in this move will become evident.

 
It’s a beautiful piece of land. Hopefully they don’t ruin it by using the same design sense they employed when designing the Rec Center facade. blech.

Read more about this story here.

Hi Kids! Welcome to School!

While the rest of Spearfish has improved in removing snow from public streets, the Spearfish School District gets a failing grade when it comes to removing snow at the elementary schools. 

This morning I watched as kids at West Elementary struggled over 2-foot piles of snow just to get to the main cross walk. Other kids were seen walking down the sides of the street because there was no place to walk on the sidewalks. Parents struggled to find a place to pull over and let their kids out. Most resorted to dropping their kids off in the middle of the road, urging them to walk down the road to the entrance.

If the City of Spearfish can clean out the City Hall area and other such areas, how can they not channel resources to clean out the area where parents pick-up and drop-off their kids for school? It’s ridiculous, to say the least.

This isn’t some beach community struck by an odd snow storm. This is South Dakota. There is absolutely no excuse for not clearing the snow so our kids can make it to school safely and on time.

It’s cold outside!!! Stew is always a great dish in this weather. Here’s a recipe handed down from my great grandmother. Of all the sea kitten recipes I found in that dusty box in the attic, this is the one I just had to share publicly.

Enjoy!

Grandma’s Sea Kitten Stew Recipe

Ingredients:

* 6 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 cup of white onions (chopped)
* 2 large cloves of garlic (chopped)
* 2/3 cup fresh parsley (chopped)
* 1 cup of fresh medium tomato (chopped)
* 2 teaspoons tomato paste (unchopped)
* 8 oz of clam juice (or shellfish stock)
* 2/3 cup beer (hopped)
* 1 1/2 lb white sea kitten fillets (chopped)
* Touch of oregano leaves, red chile pepper, thyme, pepper
* Salt

1.) Heat olive oil in heavy large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion and garlic and sauté 4 minutes. Add parsley and stir 2 minutes. Add tomato, tomato paste and cook 2 minutes longer.

2.) Add clam juice, beer, and sea kitten. Simmer until sea kitten is cooked – less than 10 minutes. Add seasoning. Salt to taste. Enjoy!

Serves 4.