This time I was in a little better position to share it with my lovely wife! Tonight we were able to enjoy another deep red sunset along with some deep red (non-alcoholic) champagne, cheese, and crackers at one of our favorite vantage points. It was at this particular place that she had given up on me proposing to her last August…because she didn’t know I already had the proposal planned for the next day! That was a fond memory for the two of us tonight.

The cold weather made it pretty tough to hang out and have a romantic sunset picnic. This is the time of year when it gets cold FAST in the evenings! I can’t wait for May.

It must have been a lovely night for a ride on the Lewis and Clark riverboat. My wife and I enjoyed an impromptu picnic on the shores of the Missouri tonight, with non-alcoholic champagne, a Spyro Gyra CD on the boom box, and her favorite snacks. The sun was so very red tonight, it was breathtaking. We took one photo before putting the camera away and enjoying our special event together.

The sunset on Friday night didn’t look like it was shaping up to be anything particularly spectacular, but then I noticed that the real show was going on in the southern sky. This enormous cloud formation had not only dramatic lines but also a brilliant array of color from the setting sun.

This cloud faced the sun with a huge upswept front, catching a big chunk of the spectrum from top to bottom. As we watched from Hillside Park, it slowly faded from pink to blue as the sun crept beyond the horizon.

What’s neat about clouds like this is that they tend to get their color after the sun has appeared to set to those of us on the ground. With that in mind, you can enjoy a beautiful sunset, then turn to any really tall clouds in the area and take in all the colors they catch from 20,000 to 30,000 feet. Their colorful show doesn’t begin until the sun reaches the horizon from their point of view. It’s like two shows for the price of one…except they’re free already.

This isn’t Tuesday’s sunset, just one posted on Tuesday. I hope the title of this post isn’t misleading. This thresher sits on a hill north of Lincoln.

This was the sunset from east of Bismarck…it’s how a tractor views the sun setting. It’s not every day a person gets a tractor’s point of view…or has an experience like the photo brought.

I parked on an approach east of Bismarck and walked to the fence line to get this photo. I’m a big proponent of property owners’ rights, so I don’t go anyplace I’m not invited…that’s why most of my “Fallen Farm” photos are taken from a distance or at an angle. After I got this photo and some others with an old threshing machine in the background, I ran back to the truck…literally. Despite the mostly clear sky, it was sprinkling on me and my camera!

At that point there was southbound traffic stuck at the train crossing on 66th Street, waiting for a train to pass. I backed out of the approach onto 66th, drove up the road a ways, then stopped on the shoulder to get an even wider shot featuring the silhouettes of some Bismarck landmarks in the distance. I got back in the truck to continue to my destination: a friend’s house, where I was doing one of those “will fix computers for Mountain Dew” calls. I saw a couple of cars following me, but didn’t think much of it.

I was well into the computer when the sheriff’s deputies knocked on the door, asking who owned the truck in the driveway. They explained to me that someone had seen me off-roading on their property. I told them what really happened, and they explained that a dog belonging to someone on 66th Street had just been shot, and they thought I might be responsible! I showed them what I had been up to, and it was all cleared up right away…we figured that they’d been stuck on the other side of the train and didn’t see that I was only parked on the side of the road. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

After a fun few rounds of volleyball with the kids from our church, my wife and I were able to bolt out to the University of Mary while this sunset was still blazing. The wispy clouds had some neat curls to them tonight. I still say we have some of the best sunsets anywhere; when I lived in the rockies, it was hard to actually see the sunset…the mountains were too tall and were about 50 feet from my back window! There’s a lot to be said for those rollin’ plains…

This was the view from Hillside Park Wednesday night. Stacy and I decided to take a nice leisurely drive up there after church, only to discover that it was a pretty popular spot. There were a couple of benches available, so we grabbed one and watched the sun go down.

Hillside Park is great for sunsets, frisbee golf, tennis…the works. There were a lot of people partaking in all those activities tonight, and the skate park was full. It’s a blessing to have such nice recreation areas!

This was the scene of a rockin’ party Thursday night on the Farwest – ahem, Lewis and Clark riverboat. We were in the area joining the throng of people photographing the sunset and I noticed this behemoth slowly making its way back up the river.

This is a fun little excursion for a group activity. I’ve never just hopped on the boat other than as part of a church or work activity, but I am pretty sure it’s best enjoyed with a boatload of friends (pun intended).

This was originally called the Farwest riverboat, but all the investors sold out and the new owners renamed it the Lewis and Clark riverboat. That’s a wise move considering all the other LC hype going on right now.

The TNS, as the kids call it, has been on somewhat of a haitus lately because I’ve been so tied up with the home remodeling project. With a little bit of breathing room now, as the project approaches completion, my wife and I took a trip north of town to a nice little hill where we saw these sweeping clouds. Ah, it feels good to be outside for a change!