13-May-2000 -- Sunday, May 13'th, 2000 I decided to fly down in my Challenger ultralight airplane and check out the confluence point of 43N 100W. This is about 19 miles from my home near Colome, SD.

This confluence point is 29 1/2 miles ENE of Valentine, NE or 17 1/2 miles NW of Springview, NE. You can see on the sectional picture Milboro and Wewela, SD and Sparks and Nordon, NE. These are all closer but they are all small unorganized towns that no longer have post offices, their populations range from 2 to 20.

This is an area where the farm country to the east gives way to the ranch country of the west. This particular area is mostly cattle country as you can see from the pictures.

In the view looking west the confluence point is directly ahead of where I was standing when I took the picture. I backed off to the east about 100' so as to stand on a small knoll. This allowed a better view of the surrounding area. In this picture you can see a small creek. If you look at the snapshot of the Aeronautical Sectional Chart you can also see that the confluence point is just east of this creek.

In the view looking east you can see my aircraft just across the fence in the alfalfa field I landed in.

This confluence point is in South Dakota. In the view looking south is the towers of a center pivot irrigation system. This irrigation system is in Nebraska. Apparently the original surveyors of this country did not have a GPS to tell them where the 43'rd parallel was *grin*.

The aerial photo is looking ESE. You can see the remains of what used to be a road in the middle of the picture, this is the SD/NE border with SD being to the left. The confluence point is about in the middle of the light colored field in the center of the photo.

The confluence point is top center of the creek picture. I would have preferred the confluence point to be in the center of the picture but the air was a little bumpy! I had my hands full trying to fly the airplane and hold the camera pointing straight down at the same time. The top of this picture is to the east.