Monday was the official start to the competition with registration starting before 8am. We pulled into the Biltmore to be welcomed by their sign. After registration, we took off for the official practice site. There we found 4 field sites and buckets of soil textures. We were a bit rusty when we started at site #4, but things got much smoother as we continued. There were lots of other teams at the sites and we couldn?t help but chuckle a bit at them. Some of them were dressed like they were going to the mall, not to a dirt hole. One team looked more like a basketball team than land judgers. One of them got upset when her new Pumas got a little mud on them. Other teams hadn?t ever been in a pit before. The scientists on site had to show them what to do. One group was using a butter knife to determine top soil depth. While some of the groups were a bit comically, others looked like they would be serious competition. Their coaches were much tougher on them than Nat has been on us. We stopped for lunch and then headed to the second practice site to look at two more holes. Finishing up about 3pm, we headed back towards Oklahoma City and stopped in Stockyard City. Since it was Monday, we got to see the auction taking place. Cattle everywhere, they used horses to get them into the auction room. We had dinner at the Cattleman?s Café. There were tons of other teams there as well. We looked around Stockyard City before heading to Shepler?s to purchase a little western wear. After a long day, we arrived at the hotel to find out that we had to practice some more. A little book work was done and we called it a day.