Out and About

We know it has been awhile since our last post, but we have been out and about a lot lately with camping at the Lewis and Clark State Park over Memorial Day to the visits that we had from both sets of parents.  We visited quite a few areas on our journeys from Theodore Roosevelt National Park to the Fort Peck area in Montana.  

 Memorial Day Camping

Here is our base camp for the Memorial Day weekend at Lewis and Clark. Originally we started off right next to the lake, as you can see, but the wind that weekend blew us inland a little.  All in all the total time for us to set up to this point here was about 40 minutes.  Not bad.

This was a sign right as we entered the tent area.....  A little spell check can do wonders.

This was just a cool picture.  Each site has a grill/fire pit on them and they all have the Lewis and Clark symbol cut out.  Well we were having some fun one night and thought it would be cool to get a picture of our fire through the cut out.  We did have to take a couple to get the flames just right behind it.

Out with Kevin's Parents

Chilling out with Kevin's parents and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.   See not all of North Dakota is boring.

This building is pretty cool.  It was built by the Corp of Engineers in North Dakota back around 1940.  It is amazing that this building has with stood the test of time, and from what we can tell there is only a little bit at the base that was added recently to help avoid some erosion.  

Here is a closer look.  It is just rock and mortar!  Engineering.

Tatonka!!  Just thought it may be interesting to show that the buffalo do range freely through out the park.  We wanted to show the babies that were born but there were a lot.  To quote Martha Stewart "It's a good thing"

Visit from Ruth's Parents

We did start off by showing my parents Theodore Roosevelt as well, but we decided to take a side trip and go to Fort Union as well.  The cool thing is we went during their annual Revival so they had it set up with a bunch of actors dressed in 1800's period clothing.  They had "black smith" men and their trading post was opened.  It was really neat.  Then out side the fort they had Teepee's set up and they had a market place there to simulate the items that were traded back in the day.  There was just so much that it is hard to remember it all.

The funny part about Fort Union is the parking was in Montana and then the fort was in North Dakota.  So they have signs up telling you that you are now leaving and such.

The other side.  We just thought it was funny.

This is the Fort Union House.  This isn't the original house that was there but they did build it to specifications from pictures that were taken and from the original foundation that did exist at the time of the build.  Inside was pretty neat.  It was a little museum with things that were traded and guns that were used to help defend the fort.
I suppose a little history on the Fort would be helpful.  Fort Union was used originally for a trading post on the Missouri and also it was a safe haven for settlers away from the Hostile Indians of the area. 

This is in one of the towers along the wall.  There were doors all over on the inside of it were soldiers would pull open a little door just enough to stick their gun out of and to see that was it.  This is a cannon door.  The wall around the fort is probably about 20 feet high and probably 8-10 inches thick, made out of solid timbers.

This is a picture of one of the towers.  You can see just a few slits in the walls for the soldiers to use.  Another neat thing is there was a boardwalk all along the top of the wall, so you have a 360 view to see any intruders coming.  

This is just a picture of inside.  The wood beams on the ground are the original bases for the many shops that were inside the fort.

This is the trade room.  There was a guy in there telling us about all the items that were traded or sold.  It was really interesting.  He was telling us that you were able to get a horse for I think it was 10 buffalo hides but there was a wool jacket in the room that it would take over 20 buffalo hides to buy.  The jacket symbolized that a man had wealth a horse is just a horse.

To switch gears we also went to the Fort Peck Dam in Montana.  Just a little info on it:  It was built in 1934 and it is the world's largest Hydraulically filled dam, the 2nd largest dam in the USA and the 8th largest dam in the world.  It is 21,026 ft long, 50ft wide at the top and the base is 4900 feet wide.  It took 125,628,00 cubic yards of fill to create.

This may just look like a lake and land, but this is the dam.  The fence and the road you see is the top of it and that is a readily used highway there.  Crazy to think.  

I wish we had a picture to show the distance but this is the power station at the bottom of the dam.

Also part of the dam is a spill way.  It was also built in 1934.  The spill way was pretty impressive.  It is only opened in times of extremely high water and since it's construction in 1934 it has only been used 4 times.  1975,1976, 1979, and 1997 were the only years it was used, well up until this year.  It has 16 gates and is 5,210 ft long.  Here is a crazy fact, it has a discharge capacity of 250,000 cfs.  The day we went you could say that amount of water was flowing.

Here is just one gate of the spillway.

This is the calm side.

Here is the crazy side.  To help imagine, the water is rushing down the spillway at 60+ mph.

There is so much more to tell but that would be a very long post, so I will stop there with just a few more notes.  We also went to the Fort Peck Dinosaur Museum that day.  It was very interesting as well.  It had quite a few exhibits of dinosaurs that existed in the North Dakota area as well as some other exhibits of items that were used back when the dam and spill way were created.  Just for instance a 1900's Cadillac and a drill press used.  They also had a "fish tank" were the water was circulated right out of the Missouri, and we saw walleye swimming around, and of course some northern, carp, and a lawyer.  The lawyer was interesting, looks like an eel.  

So as you can see we have done a lot the past month or so and it was nice to see our parents again.  Fun times were had by all.  

Future Caption:  Kevin and I plan to go to Mount Rushmore for the 4th of July weekend, so we should have a lot of really cool pics to post again soon.  So until next time....