I reached the falls around noon and they didn't disappoint. I can't remember when I've ever seen the creek so high or the falls so ferocious.
Some intrepid activists had posted a large sign on the rock wall behind the falls saying "Love water, not oil".
It was painted on a large sheet of clear plastic.
Hey environmentalpatients; you know what irony, I mean plastic is made of, don't you?
As if that wasn't bad enough, there was the paint itself. I'm going to give the activists the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they were self aware enough to avoid using an oil based enamel but do you know what latex paint is made of? I'll give you three guesses.
When Benjamin Moore, Ace and Valspar tout their new green technology, they're comparing their paint to the way they used to make it. They aren't comparing it to Minnehaha creek.
Even if you whipped up some enviro-paint of your own formula in your green house, there's the color you used; cobalt blue. I don't know much but I do know pigments and there's only one way to get that blue. Cobalt is a toxic heavy metal. Which, btw, is being power washed off your sign by the torrential spray of the falls, molecule by molecule into the creek. Thanks for that.
I couldn't see how you attached your sign to the eroding walls of the cliff but I do know that it will eventually come loose. Sooner, more probably than later, thanks to the pounding it's taking by the historically strong current picking at it. When it does, it will get caught in that current and rush down the creek to the Mississippi river, which is also running at historic volume. Once caught in the current of the Big Muddy, your plastic sign will keep moving, shedding cobalt molecules, until somewhere between here and New Orleans, it is fished out of the river by some other activist, who will curse the litter bug who threw it in the river in the first place.