Fall 2025 Adopt-A-Highway Report

“WE GOT BUFF’ED!”

Our cleanup crew began gathering at Dareo’s Pizza at 9:15 in the morning, Saturday October 4^th. Waivers were signed, vests, gloves, and bright orange garbage bags were distributed, North and South teams were picked, and at 9:30 the eleven of us carpooled in two vehicles south on Minnesota Ave to our adopted ditches just south of the Harrisburg corner. Kathy drove the South Team while Harold ferried the North Team. Thanks Harold, that’s a nice rig you have there.

Shout out to Shane and the crew at the Canton DOT shop. I always text the shop to let them know when we will be in our ditches and that we take our trash with us. I don’t know if this information prioritized mowing of our ditches but in the days ahead of our cleanup all four miles of our ditches got their shoulder’s mowed. This made for a safer, more pleasurable, and more productive cleanup. Thank you.

If not for the strong wind directly out of the South, it was a beautiful Fall day. More than once the wind would liberate trash from our orange bags while we were trying to fill them. All told it was a pretty good haul for a Fall cleanup. Half of the trash was chopped up by the mower and easy to see. The other half was left whole, hiding in the tall weeds and grass, with some escaping only until our cleaning next Spring. Thank you C & R Supply for allowing us to dump our trash in your dumpsters. It is the most efficient pathway to the landfill.

A person or persons, who remain anonymous to me, Buff’ed our cleaning crew. For those readers not familiar with buffing, during the2024 and 2025 Black Hills Corvette Classic, each attendee received a fist sized foam buffalo. When they are given to another it is called buffing and among the reasons to buff include generosity, a helping hand, or you just want to buff someone. Applying a liberal amount of fun to the “you can keep what you find” rule and adding in a dose of warm regards, our mystery person(s) salted the ditches with corvette treasures. Each was individually sealed in a zip lock bag. Tom Mattys received his X’mas present early as Deb gave him the red, white, and blue Holographic Corvette display she found. Several Corvette model cars were found along with two foam buffalos with $5 bills banded to them. We got buff’ed and we liked it! Thank you mystery Buffer!

We returned to Dareo’s for pizza and refreshment. Deb left us to spend time with grandkids. We did have a longer wait than normal for our pizzas to arrive due I believe to large orders backing up the kitchen. The secret is out..Dareo’s makes good pizza. Our waitress for 25 years retired last year. I miss you Sweetie!

The State of South Dakota and the Sioux Falls Corvette Club would like to say thanks to the folks below who came out this Fall to help keep our commitment to the Adopt-A-Highway program. Thank you also to the 110 different individuals who have volunteered over the last 15 years, and the many others who volunteered during the 20 years prior to that.

Thank you: Kathy Miller, Deb Mattys, Harold VanDerWilt, Larry Mortensen, Joyce VanDerWilt, Bruce Langhoff, Margaret Langhoff, Brooklyn Sank, Don Fox, Patti Fox, and Dusty Miller.

Respectfully submitted,

Dusty Miller