I took the opportunity to leather up and stretch the big Suzuki’s legs Sunday afternoon, of course with twenty-some pounds of camera gear strapped to my back. I’m a daddy of two now, so I have to learn to consolidate my hobbies if I want to get time to do them. If I could just find a way to train karate while I SCUBA dive with a controller for a nitro-burning RC truck in each hand, while riding one of my fleet of motorcycles and taking a picture, all while pulling a giant wheelie on my mountain bike at the tennis court. That would just about cover it, I think I could hold my favorite frisbee in my teeth. Instead of attempting the impossible, I have instead resorted to times like this to steal away for a little chunk of time, and pick and choose which hobbies get my attention for now. Sooner than I can imagine, my boys will be old enough to do many of those things with me.

This was another one of those days where I catch my self saying, “I love my polarizer!” On a nice sunny day, it gets rid of all that pesky scattered light and brings out the best in nature’s colors…especially the blue of the skies. It also helped that the fields were full of what I’m told is golden clover, as seen behind this threshing machine north of Bismarck! Note the wind farm on the horizon.

After reading about the abandoned town of Arena, North Dakota, I decided to head up there and see what I could see. I saw what was left of an old elevator, the lone house in town, and the church next door. All were boarded up. It was a beautiful day, even in leather racing apparel, and I made some other photo stops along the way. The fields and the sky collaborated to give me lots of color Sunday, and I was able to enjoy the photography and the ride.

I suppose you could technically say I went “nowhere” since the town of Arena doesn’t officially exist anymore, at least not as it once did. According to my GPS, I went “nowhere” fast…reaching 245 mph maximum speed! I’d like to take this occasion to say I WISH. I couldn’t do 245 mph if I wanted to. I’m not saying how close I got, however. I’ll keep that between me and the bugs splattered all over the visor of my helmet. As far as the other numbers on the display, well…they’re worthless too. I forgot to stop logging the trip when I got home, so it sat logging all day. I don’t know how long I was riding, how long I was stopped taking pictures, or even my top speed (244? hm…). Great day for photos and motorcycling, bad day for data acquisition. I guess I’ll have to go do it again. Darn.

Poking around southwest of my beloved Mandan, I came across this behemoth. It’s actually not that big by today’s standards, but it’s still a formidable hunk of metal. Driven by a small two-cylinder engine, with two spark plugs per cylinder, this machine probably hasn’t moved in years. I suspect it will soon, however.

Check it out: chain drive on the bucket arm! Pretty cool. I took a lot of pictures of this piece of hardware, but don’t have time to post them here just yet. Somehow I resisted the urge to climb all over the thing. It’s a lot bigger than the ones I used to play with in my sandbox as a kid! I guess the little boy in me is still mesmerized by heavy equipment such as this.

Before things clouded up this morning, there was a fantastic sunrise. I’ve photographed most local landmarks over and over and over, so I figured I’d get outta town a little bit.

Little baby Jonathan was up and down all night; therefore, so were his mommy and daddy. I’d just finished a shift with him and gone to bed at around 5:30, sleeping until 7:00. Stacy was feeding Jonathan, PJ was sacked out, so I hopped in the truck for a little bit. I found myself west of town a little ways, and I wasn’t disappointed. The sky grew pink as I bolted toward a familiar landmark, one which I’ll post later this week. I stopped to take a panoramic photo of New Salem along the way. Sorry, no cow. There’s more to this sleepy little town than a big hunk of fiberglass named Sue.

I took off early from work last Friday and went off on one of my notorious photography drives, exploring the little nooks and crannies around our fair cities. I was west of Mandan a little ways when I noticed this abandoned Occident elevator just outside of Almont. Okay, so I was more than a little west of Mandan!

This particular day I was capturing photos of a lot of Fallen Farm photos as well as old farm equipment and other North Dakota scenery, but I never thought I’d find an abandoned elevator. Using a circular polarizer filter on my lens, I was able to get a nice blue sky with clouds that really ‘pop’ out of the blue. As I do with a broken-down farm house or barn, I felt a touch of sadness that this big structure was no longer in use.

I was working out of state this past week and, on my way back home, got to enjoy Highway 85 through South Dakota. Wow. I don’t do a whole lot of traveling that would introduce me to a long, straight shot through sparsely inhabited territory. At times one can see miles ahead, with the straight ribbon of road visible all the way to the horizon.

I made good time but, since the rest of the crew was with me, I was unable to stop and take any pictures. We were all in a hurry to get home after a long week. I’ll have to make a special trip for that. It sure is good to be back in North Dakota though!

This is a view of the Red River between Fargo and Moorhead. There’s a really cool recreation area just south of the Main Street bridge where people can wade out among the rocks and fish or just cool off. The banks are landscaped and, in some places, paved with concrete. It looks like a fun place to spend an afternoon.

Here’s a little closer look so you can see the foot bridge crossing the river upstream a ways. I think Mandan should do something like this on the Heart River; there’s a similar area beneath the Highway 6 bridge that would be perfect, and it’s already next to a developed park. Obviously this wouldn’t work with the Missouri, but the Heart River is just begging to be used for some recreation. Anybody got a bunch of rocks they wouldn’t mind dumping overboard?

The title of this post is a tribute to one of my favorite songs by the group Grasshopper Takeover. A friend of mine and I were, in fact, up and on our way at 4am Saturday morning, after a mere 45 minutes of sleep Friday night. The destination: western North Dakota, both units of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and a drive skirting the National Grasslands. The photo above was actually taken a short while after leaving Bismarck. That’s the moon on the horizon, not the sun! By exposing the photo for a little longer, the night sky came alive in the same brilliant orange we’re used to seeing during the sunset.

Once we got to the South Unit, it was time to chase some wildlife. This gigantic beast, however, was standing near to the parking lot. Not too near, thankfully; thanks to a telephoto lens, I didn’t have to live too dangerously.

I was hoping this little dispute would turn into a full blown fight, but these two guys worked out their differences after only a couple of taps.

The most dramatic scenery of the Badlands is the erosion. Erosion formed this incredibly beautiful area, and erosion constantly transforms it. What’s nice is that we can go hiking around in it. It really is more fun to see and experience firsthand than it is to photograph it.

There are herds of wild horses roaming the South Unit, one simply needs to know where to find them. The more exciting of the bunch required a little bit of hiking. Okay, a LOT of hiking. Thanks to the GPS attached to my camera pack, we were able to find our way back! It was great to actually get out into the Badlands on foot for a while.

Of course, there were lots of different flowers. I’ll only post one, but there were indeed quite a variety of different flowers. They stand out against the sand and clay of the soil, to be sure.

The sky was active that day. It was clear in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon, and the sky varied from hour to hour. These clouds looked like a set of venetian blinds across the sky.

I was able to add to my Fallen Farm series with this old farmhouse, sitting adjacent to Highway 85. What was even better was the dramatic sky above; the clouds were starting to really twist and twirl as a storm front approached from the northwest.

In the North Unit of the TR park we were unable to spot much for wildlife. They don’t have horses, and the buffalo were hiding down by the campground. There was a lot of beautiful scenery, however, and we took it all in. This particular rock is sitting a couple hundred feet above the floor of the canyon. I could have climbed over to it and tipped it off its perch. Believe me, I thought about it for a while. Anybody would be tempted, of course, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the view for other people. Thus it remains in place.

Oh yeah…the wildlife. I was hoping for a rattlesnake, inspecting all sorts of rocks and flats. Sadly, although my friend wasn’t disappointed, we never did find a snake. I did, however, find this little lizard. He darted up the rocks as I approached the area, which instantly caught my eye. We took a few pics of him from different angles, then he scrambled into the gap between the rocks.

By 6pm or so we were ready to head back. I’d hit my second wind, third wind, and fourth wind already, due to my lack of sleep the night before. We clocked five hundred miles on the road, hiked a few miles if we totaled up all the walking, had a fantastic pizza in Medora, and guzzled lots of water and pop. I took this shot on Highway 200 as we were cruising down the road. It was a fantastic trip. I slept like a rock Saturday night as a result, and have hundreds of photos to search through. So what did you do this weekend?

Along Highway 1806 this weekend I spotted this old truck on its side along the railroad tracks. How long it’s been in such a state, who can say? But it made a pretty nice photo opportunity. Its wheels have long gone missing, so it’s unlikely to be removed anytime soon. I guess it’s actually a pretty nice decoration, in a rural sort of way. Just as I’m intrigued by abandoned farm buildings, old vehicles like this really catch my attention as well.

One thing that’s nice about a relic like this being hidden in rural North Dakota is that people are less likely to pry parts off of it for eBay! Although I notice that the trim rings are gone and the hood is open. To investigate further would have meant hopping a fence line, and I didn’t have permission to be there. No worries, I was in perfect position to get the photos I wanted, and this is one of them.

If you’ve ever traveled I-94 east of Bismarck, and you’re likely a hermit if you haven’t, you’ve probably seen these two towers just north of the Menoken exit. I was in the area recently, walking around a waterfowl production area looking for photos, when I saw these familiar towers.

When I first started at the now-extinct Meyer Broadcasting in 1990, the employee handbook boasted the KFYR AM 550 tower as the tallest free-standing radio at the time it was built. I don’t know how it stacks up now, but it’s a pretty tall structure. The “stick” towers you see held up by guy-wires are much much taller, but that’s because they have lots of additional support. These beasties here are built on top of big insulators and have no wires helping them stay upright.

AM radio towers are different than others in that the tower is the antenna. An FM or television “stick” is simply a tower with an antenna at the top of it. So you don’t want to be anywhere near an AM tower while the transmitter is operating!

The little tower is an interesting feature. AM radio signals travel using “ground wave” propagation during the day, but at night the sky’s ionosphere changes and reflects AM radio waves back to earth. That means an AM station can be heard a LONG ways away. So what if there are two 550 AM stations? There are actually a lot more than two, but two high-power 550’s near each other’s range of operation could run into problems if their signal areas suddenly grew at night and overlapped each other. That’s why many stations, including KFYR, “go directional” around sunset each night.

The little tower is energized and “pulls” the signal toward Bismarck (away from Canada, rather) so that it does not cause interference with the other 550s north and east of us. By controlling the power to each transmitter, the engineers can “shape” the signal area in such a way as to avoid interference. Pretty cool, huh?

These days, the transition back to “non-directional” happens during the PH Phactor in the mornings. As sunrise comes earlier, that’ll start to get done before Phil takes the board. But you’ll know the switch is happening when you hear a burp of static for a second or two, then the signal returns to normal.