They’ll need a crane

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Another music reference for ya there. A friend called to tell that some eagles were roosting in her tree along the river. After work I poked around along the river, but the eagles were long gone. I did, however, spot this picturesque angle of Old Glory flying high above the Memorial Bridge project.

That big coccoon under the Memorial Bridge

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If you’ve passed the Memorial Bridge construction site on the Bismarck side lately, you’ve likely noticed this big improvised tent along the hillside. I found out the story on this eye-catching structure today in a brief little tour. Here’s what it looks like inside:

This tent acts as a shelter for some very important work taking place inside. This is where the ground has been stabilized in preparation for the new bridge work…in fact, the ground beneath the loader contains around two hundred steel pilings, joined by welded steel plates! These guys are serious.

This area is where a large retaining wall will be constructed, and the pilings running down the length of this tent will be underground by the time things are finished. The sidewalk will eventually be poured on the left side of that concrete line. There’s a lot more steel work yet to be done, too!

The bed of this area is some of the nicest sandy soil I’ve seen since I did the concrete work around my house and garage (yeah, I’m a do-it-yourself type of guy). They’re busy getting ready for a big cement retaining wall to make sure that the land adjacent to the new bridge will be stable. This isn’t just a bunch of guys with loaders moving dirt; this is a careful and intricate process.

I’ve only mentioned a few of the really cool details about the work these guys are doing. I really appreciate the tour and answers to all my geeky questions. I sure can’t wait to see how the bridge work progresses over the next couple of months! Once this part is done, they’ll be off to the Mandan side to get that going. Hmmm…I wonder if they’re going to reuse that plastic?

Glen Schmidt Family

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Tuesday night the Glen Schmidt Family performed at a local nursing home, and I had the pleasure of joining the folks there to watch and listen. This family plays gospel music with what I consider to be sort of a bluegrass twist, and they’re a definite must-see any time you’ve got the opportunity. I’m not just saying that because they’re my friends!

There are a couple of particular songs they perform that are stirring to the soul, but my favorite has to be “I’ll Fly Away.” When they wrap up the show with this hymn, I’m powerless to fight the waterworks as it always moves me to tears. Sometimes I last until the point where they invite everyone to join in, but the thought of everyone in heaven singing like that someday is overpowering. Tuesday night I actually made it all the way to the truck, but that’s as far as I got. Their music is simply lovely.

They’ve got a CD for sale too – you can listen to the songs and place an order on their website at www.glenschmidtfamily.com. They play at Buckstop Junction during the summer, as well as a variety of other events in Bismarck-Mandan and surrounding communities. I invite you to listen and buy a CD – you’ll be moved by the music and will be supporting a really special ministry.

Sliver of sunset

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As I dragged my poor, dejected bones away from work today I noticed an interesting phenomenon. The sunset was taking place as it normally does, but it was only visible through a narrow band of clear skies on the horizon. Dense clouds acted as an opaque curtain above, with the horizon not far below. It was quite cool.

That narrow slit in the sky, however, was going to do some pretty cool things as the sun’s rays came through it at various angles. Once the sun began to duck below the horizon, its light began to bathe the clouds with color.

These photos were taken from the hill behind the University of Mary. I got more angles than these, but I think the three photos shown here best convey the story behind tonight’s dramatic skies. What turned out as just a unique window on the sunset became a diffraction grating of sorts (for you science geeks out there) and it was like experiencing three sunsets in one!

Fallen Farm #11

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It’s been a while since I posted a photo in this series. I have a soft spot in my heart for old farmsteads, although I grew up a city kid in the mountains, and North Dakota has many for me to photograph. This farmstead sits southeast of Bismarck.

With a new baby and more than enough other irons in the fire, it’s not easy to find subjects for my photography habit. Most of the pictures I post here are taken while out running errands or on the way to or from work. Winter brings its own challenges along, but I had a particularly fruitful trip around the outskirts of town this weekend. This is only one of the sights I captured along my way.

It’s neat to be able to find so many pictures from right around our beloved cities…that’s the reason I founded this blog in the first place! I can’t count how many times I’ve heard that Bismarck and Mandan are boring, or that there’s nothing to do here. I’ve never believed that.

Here’s a note to you teenagers out there: nobody is going to grab you by the ears and shove entertainment into your skull. There’s plenty of cool stuff to see and do around here, you just need to take the initiative and explore it. You’ll learn to love the Bismarck-Mandan area as much as I do.

Winter welcome wagon

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One would think that winter would make finding nice photos around town difficult. That’s somewhat true, but then I venture upon sights like this. The wagon in this picture sits near the entrance to a yard southeast of Lincoln. One of the benefits of poking around rural roads surrounding our fair cities of Bismarck and Mandan is spotting stuff like this, a piece of North Dakota history.

No parking – unless there’s a bag over the sign

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Every two years the parking situation at the Capitol changes dramatically. With all the increased traffic due to the legislative session, some allowances must be made. That’s why you’ll find certain No Parking signs covered for the duration of the session.

I had an interesting incident involving this parking situation a few years back. I parked behind the state library, ran around to the front entrance to return some books, and came back to find that someone had backed into my vehicle. I have to commend the Highway Patrol on their fast response time, because an officer was already there to write a report.

I looked like the bad guy initially because I was parked in a “No Parking” zone. But once I reminded the officer that the legislature was in session, he agreed: the person who didn’t look where they were backing up was at fault. I believe this is actually part of state law, but don’t know the exact citation.

Despite the fact that more areas have been opened to parking, it’s still going to be tough to park near the capitol for a little while. It’s nice to see, however, that the folks in charge of the grounds are trying to make more parking area available.

Icy desert

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I don’t know why it’s called The Desert, but that has been the name for Kimball Bottoms as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s the sand. Well, there wasn’t any sand to be found yesterday as I went off-roading after work. There were very few places not already chewed up, and snowmobile and ATV riders were playing already when I got there. It sure is a nice place to enjoy a cool January sunset!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

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First off, let me wish everyone a blessed and happy new year! Ours is off to a great start; snow, baby, bird…this is a happy house. This also marks a rather special time for me personally; it was one year ago that I decided to embark on this little labor of love I called the Bismarck-Mandan Blog.

It was with a post featuring a photo of the capitol lit up with “2006” that I first started this website, which is convenient timing. Every anniversary of the Bismarck-Mandan Blog I can just post a picture of the latest capitol!

Now, on to the shocking stats. I’m both flattered and humbled by the stats counter on my site…not the ones the blog keeps, but the server stats. I get very detailed information about visits to this site, and it’s pretty amazing to watch.

As you can see, the number of people visiting this site has climbed pretty steadily in the past twelve months. I broke a record again this month with 125,572 hits! I also set records for numbers of visiting users at 19,828. November was the busiest month for page views, when people looked at 46,181 pages from the site. Coincidentally, my biggest day was November 14th with 11,171 hits. Wow. I think that was a day I posted about the Fighting Sioux…apparently I’m not the only one with a passion for that issue.

One thing that has puzzled me somewhat is that fewer people rate the posts than read them. Clicking on the dots allows people to enter a rating of 1-5. Another one is comments. Relatively few people leave comments or read the comments. At work we went through a study of how web page users view the sites they visit, and it’s never the way that the designers intended. I guess this site follows suit in that regard.

Thanks again for everyone who has helped with word-of-mouth publicity for this site. I’ve never advertised it — although Phil and Jason have graciously given me mention on KFYR-Radio a couple of times — yet between 500 and 1000 people come to read it every day.

I’m a big privacy nut, so I originally set out to be somewhat anonymous on this blog. I was a hacker in the 80’s who narrowly escaped some big trouble, and failed to escape other big trouble, so I keep my personal information pretty private. I have a family to think about now as well, so that’s why I’m reluctant to post that kind of thing. It wasn’t until late in the year that I actually let a couple of pictures of me hit the web…I guess I’m relaxing just a little bit. I didn’t know if the comments fields would start to fill up with nonsense I didn’t want, or if I’d get flooded with hate mail about some of my opinions, and thankfully that hasn’t happened. So I’ll probably post a little more personally in the future…just a bit.

I was approached this year by the KX network and asked if they could syndicate my blog on their site. I agreed, and we’ve had a good relationship. At the bottom of each of my posts as they appear on KX network sites around North Dakota is a link to my original post on this site. Judging from the referral stats, people like to see the original post, probably because the pictures are shrunk down on the KX sites. Their site sometimes truncates my posts, too. So if you’re reading this on a KX Network site, hop on over to the real deal!

I originally figured this site would just be another voice in a vacuum, a place to park my photography and rekindle my love for writing. To have people find it worthy of their time to view it on a daily basis is pretty amazing. Your support leaves me speechless, really…all I can say is that it feels really great. I look forward to providing more pictures, noteworthy community tidbits, and the occasional inflammatory opinions in 2007 and beyond.

Snow Day!

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It was long overdue, but I’m not complaining. This weekend we finally got enough snow to frolic in, and that’s exactly what the truck, the camera, and I did yesterday. A few guys from church meet the last Saturday morning of each month for breakfast, so I met them at 6:45, and after that came several hours of driving and hiking in the white stuff! My first stop was the cross country ski trail on the northeast corner of Mandan. My footsteps there were not the first.

Next I decided to poke around along the Missouri River. The geese apparently had the same idea, because an enormous flock of them was tucked into the rocks along the shore. They didn’t care for a guy with a big backpack and monopod poking around (or was it the NDSU Bison hat?) so they swam outward and upstream. Thankfully I managed to avoid falling in.


There are a lot of wild turkeys in the Bismarck-Mandan area, and this is a portion of one of them. They were hanging out in a residential neighborhood in north Mandan, and even came toward me as I crouched to take their photo! The snow was coming down fast enough to accumulate on their backs, and they fluffed up to stay warm and shake the snow off every now and then.

With a fresh tank of gas, it was time to drive Around the World and see what kind of nice rural snow scenes awaited. It actually began to snow so heavily that the view was obscured. That didn’t stop me from taking a picture of this friendly scarecrow before moving on.

While out south of Fort Lincoln, I paused to capture this bridge and the high waters of the Missouri River on the other side. When I started to leave, the window on my truck wouldn’t roll up! The passenger side window worked, so I knew the fuse was good. I pounded on the door a bit, tugged on the window…nothing worked. I resigned myself to a cold, damp drive into town, but when I got back on the highway…it worked! The trip wasn’t over yet.

This bridge was sold to the Fort Lincoln Trolley folks many years ago, so it doesn’t see any traffic during the winter. It ought to. This was a very picturesque scene, although they’d have to bring hot chocolate along for the ride.

I took lots more photos, but it’s been such a busy weekend that I’m just posting the highlights. It’s time to wax the sleds for more frolicking!