This weekend we decided to take a quick getaway trip to the black hills once again.

We also have taken up photography as a hobby, we have jumped right in and really enjoy ourselves.  Please take a look at a few of the pictures we snapped this weekend and a few from tonight.  Let us know what you think through the comments, or the shoutbox.

Click on each picture to make them larger.

Enjoy, and thanks again for checking out the blog.

 Pigtail Bridge near Mt. Rushmore

 No details needed

 She was curious about what I was doing.

 Creek deep in the Black Hills.

 Once again, no description needed.

 Simon??

 Devils Tower in Wyoming...highlight of the weekend.

 Balls...big balls!

 Prairie Dogging

 Sawyer, our neighbors awesome dog, always ready to play, and very well behaved.

This picture I will be submitting in my first contest at the Camera Club I just joined, the theme is "rust".

The Williston Experience.

 I thought I would share a few of the thousands of videos on youtube that feature the Williston area, and all that is going on here.  I am always getting asked what it is like out here.  These videos show a few of the things we see every day.  As always, the videos do not do justice to what it's really like out here.

Enjoy!

 This one you have to click on, but its worth checking out.  This was featured on CNN.

CNN Story

We know.....It's been a long time

A lot has been going on since the last time we posted... Busy with work, camping and also finding out that we will be adding an addition to our family!  

Here are a few pictures of our life.....

Just showing you what a drilling rig looks like.  This is the first stage to a oil well.  It is pretty crazy that from start to finish a well from drilling to putting the pump on only takes about 28-30 days.

 Three pumps just about ready to go and they are in a small area, which means a big pocket of oil, crazy. 

Switching gears a little to trips that we have taken in the past couple of months.

This is a picture from our 4th of July trip to South Dakota.  Badlands are just as beautiful there as they are in North Dakota.  

This is just a side picture of George Washington on the boardwalk under Mt.Rushmore.

The Needles Highway.  Highly recommended if you go to the Mt.Rushmore, Custer area of South Dakota.  What views!

This is just a beautiful lake by Custer, SD.

Here is our base camp on labor day weekend.  We went to our old stand by Lewis and Clark State Park.  It was busy there that weekend, but it was nice.  

This was just a cool spot.  We went for a drive one day and we ended up at Fort Buford, there is a lot of history in that area, but this was one of the interesting things.  About 1/2 mile away from the actual fort is the grave yard.  Now the actual grave sites have been moved to a national cemetary, but they did put down replacement markers for the original people that had been buried there. 

Each one was of course labeled with the name and date of death, but then there was the explination as to what caused their death.  It was very interesting reading through them all.  

This was all during the time when fur trading was big along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.  

More recently we took a nice long camping trip to Interstate State Park in Minnesota to meet up with family and friends.  Then we ventured off to the North Shore of Minnesota to enjoy a long awaited, very needed vacation.

Here is the gang with their campers, ready for the weekend!

Here are Ruth's nephew's and niece. They look so innocent, but we know better.  Ha ha ha!   It was nice to see them, it had been a long time.  Have to love the smiles!

Here are the adults of the weekend, enjoying some needed time without wrangling the kids.

Here is why the adults could enjoy their supper!  Cute...so much concentration. 

There is a story behind this (you needed to be there), but this is Bob.  He is so proud of the future rock he is going to grow!

This is the group on the last day!  It was fun, and as usual, time went by so fast.  It was good to see everyone again!

At this time we parted ways from the family :(   We headed up to Cascade Falls State park for the next leg of our journey.  We don't have any pictures from Cascade Falls due to when we got there on Monday it was raining and there was a burning ban there due to how dry it had been during the summer. We did go to Grand Marais and visited the shops and local eateries.  We tried to make the best out of the weather, but by Wednesday we ended up moving to Gooseberry Falls State Park.  There wasn't a burning ban there that's why, but when we arrived the weather did let up.  Good thing because we saw some cool things.

 

For instance, we went for a drive one day up to the Canadian border and we decided to stop by another park.  While driving through we came across a dumpster that was tipped over.  When we drove past it we could hear some noises, so we backed up and listened.  It was an animal making a whimpering noise.  Immediately we figured there was a bear stuck in there!  So we drove up to a local restaurant/general store, and tried to get a hold of the DNR, or someone.  We couldn't, so what ended up happening was the owner called his dad and we all drove to the dumpster.  It was an ordeal but what ended up happening was we pulled the bar that holds the lid shut out and pulled open the doors for the bear to jump out.  It did , so everyone left.  Well we were the last ones to pull away and then we heard another noise.  Man there is another bear in there!  So we ended up just grabbing the strap that was still attached to the doors and pulled it open, and then the other bear came running out.

Here are the two bears that were stuck in the dumpster.  It was an ordeal, but they seamed very happy to be free.  They sat and played by this tree for about 20 minutes before they walked over the hill behind them to get back to mom.  It was a good feeling to help them out!

Out on a drive, Kevin witnessed a helicopter doing what seemed like drills.  He would drop down below the tree line and then after a few minutes come back up with a basket and then fly over to another area and drop back down below another tree line.  He said this went on for about 20 minutes before he left, but he never found out, for sure, what was going on.  Just cool to see.  We were sure it had something to do with the fires that were burning only about 50 miles away.

Another cool site along the North Shore of Minnesota is the  Split Rock Lighthouse.  It is the only remaining light house in the world that still turns by means of a grandfather clock mechanism that floats on a pool of mercury.  When you walk up into the top of the Lighthouse you can see the glass prisms turning yet and it is silent.  Rather amazing. The prism was made in 1909 in Paris France.  It was purchased back then for $10,000.  Today it is one of the only remaining of its kind and is valued at nearly $1,000,000.  Another area with a lot of history to it.

This is the last day of our trip.  We decided to explore the park that we were staying at, Gooseberry Falls State Park.  Really cool, there are 5 falls within a 30 minute walk from the main office and this is just one of them.  The water was rather low this year, but it is still a beautiful site.  

There is a trail that runs all around the falls area, and it is nice.  A lot of time is spent maintaining them.  There are even a couple of bridges to cross over the river to walk up and down on both sides.  Well while we walking on the trails we came across a sign that we just couldn't pass up to take a picture at!

Classic!!!!

After a long week we were ready to come back to the normal daily lifestyle, but it was hard.  We do miss the area and all of the things to explore, but we also enjoy the area we are in.  It's just another chapter in our lives!

Back in Williston

Ruth and I have returned from our weekend in the Black Hills.  We had an excellent weekend, and took about a million pictures and videos.  We are super tired from the long weekend, and the long trip back.  We will be putting together a nice long post full of stories, pictures, and videos.  That should be happening tomorrow, so stay tuned.  Just too tired to go through all of the pictures right now. 

Check back tomorrow!

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....