Fun flyin’

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A couple of weekends ago I was pleased to discover signs pointing to a Bismarck Aircraft Modelers’ fun fly event east of town. The weather was good, the wind wasn’t complicating things, and I happened to have a little extra time after some work on a parade float for July 4th. After we got a couple hours in on the float, I took my family eastward to check on the planes.

The BAM club is one of two in town, and calls the Hoge Island airfield home. Sadly, Hoge Island (not Hogue, local media) is under water right now, so a neighboring club was gracious enough to lend them their field for the day. There were hot dogs and other snacks & refreshments served and it was a glorious day to be out watching the planes. Some of them are capable of speeds over 100 mph, and there were some really interesting designs and pilots as well.

Naturally, my little guys were totally intrigued by this. They asked if there were some that they could fly, but I don’t think putting the controls of a fast airborne object into the hands of a three or four year old is a good idea. I told them they’d have to wait.

I drive little nitro-powered RC trucks – two of them, to be exact. My little guys dig those machines as well, but they’re too young to drive them. Capable of speeds over 60mph, they’re simply too dangerous for children. I do, however, have some old Tyco battery powered RC trucks that are just fine for kids, and they’re getting their training on those. Who knows, maybe someday they’ll be RC pilots!

I’m not sure if it’s one of the BAM guys who created this YouTube video at the beginning of the month, flying over the area north of Bismarck where these planes normally play. It’s an interesting video, though. Of course, now that we’re at 150,000cfs from Garrison alone, and have had plenty of rain, the area is even more inundated with flood waters than in the video.

If you’d like more information on the BAM (Bismarck Aircraft Modelers), click here to visit their website at bamrcflyers.org.

Anachronism

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This post isn’t just an anachronism because it documents an event held by the Society for Creative Anachronism. No, it’s also an anachronism because I took these photos weeks ago and am only posting them now!

We had just held a little party at Barnes & Noble for my 4 year old because of a reading milestone he’d reached. A picnic was planned to follow, so we took all the friends and cousins over to Sertoma Park to enjoy the day. That’s when we found these folks grillin’ food, swingin’ swords, and generally having a grande olde tyme.

Craftsmanship is key when making a set of armour such as this. I couldn’t help but think “None shall pass!” every time I looked at one of these helmets or other garb. Naturally any Monty Python jokes are well worn at an event like this, so I just held my tongue.

Coat of mail to go with your shield, anyone? This is hand made and very cool. It’s heavy, yet flexible. There were plenty of other creations on display as well, but I’m sure this sort of thing always gets the limelight.

A map of the world, SCA style. It looks like something you might find on the Strange Maps blog, and has some interesting delineation. Just in case you were wondering where we reside in all this:

Look just south of Lacus Sakakawea and you’ll find our general region. It doesn’t look like, according to this map, we’re in dragon territory. Must be all the flooding and shortage of caves.

This local bunch of SCA folks was very friendly and hospitable, and it looks like they were having a great time. Want to learn more? Click here to view a map of the Kingdom of Northshield, the SCA region in which their group resides. Tell ’em I sent ye!

Foggy Bottom Boy

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After breakfast with some friends last Saturday morning, I ventured south toward the river bottoms to see what sort of photographic opportunities were presented by the morning fog. It was still during the 6 o’clock hour when we wrapped up breakfast, so I was able to get ahead of the sun and sky a little bit. I stopped by this bridge near the entrance to Fort Lincoln and decided perhaps a refreshing morning hike up to the blockhouses would be a perfect way to enjoy the morning.

At first, I expected the blockhouses to be above the fog, since their elevation is so high above the river level. I was wrong…when I got up to the top of the hill, I saw that they were socked in with a thick blanket of fog too. In fact, when I was taking this shot I could see the airborne droplets dashing past my face between my camera and me. It was strange but intriguing, something I hadn’t witnessed since my days of living and working at very high elevation in Montana.

The sun was working on punching its way through the fog, but thankfully I had a pretty good window of opportunity before the morning blanket started to burn off with the rising sun’s rays.

As you can see, from the top of the blockhouse there wasn’t a whole lot of visibility at first.

Slowly the fog up at my level began to dissipate, leaving a thick covering over the river valley below. The sky above was perfect, a beautiful blue and crisp with the morning.

For a brief while I had a little companionship. I have an agreement with the birds; it’s not complicated, but it’s hard to explain. He didn’t care for the idea of me putting on a larger lens to get an extreme close-up. I guess that was the last straw. He left as suddenly as he dropped in.

The sun climbed steadily higher, and with that it dissipated more and more of the thick fog below. As the fog began to recede, the flooding of the Bismarck-Mandan area began to reveal itself.

Soon the view of airborne water was replaced with the view of ominously expanding riverbed water as the Missouri continued to rise and reach out further and further from its normal channel. Vantage points like this are important because they can give a good frame of reference as far as the amount of water we’re dealing with right now.

The fog was suddenly just…gone. The thick covering was replaced by amazing blue skies and a warm, friendly sun. This allowed me to take some photos and video of the blockhouses with brilliant green grass and stunning blue skies. I did plenty of that and then pointed the truck for home.

As much as I like to sleep in, as a photographer I appreciate the morning. You can’t duplicate morning light.if I hadn’t gotten up early, I’d never have seen any of this. As luck would have it, I was able to play with my cameras quite a bit before the clouds rolled in. That’s how I like it.

Hey…this irrigation stuff really works!

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I hope a little “flood humor” at a time like this isn’t inappropriate. I couldn’t help but appreciate a little bit of irony at the sight of this irrigation rig up to its wheels in water. This is on the Mandan side, where many of these rigs populate the landscape. From time to time I could see their blue strobes flashing at night from my stargazing vantage point near Double Ditch, and for the longest time I wondered what they were. They’re unlikely to be needed in this area for a while, I presume, or in many other areas around North Dakota.

This raises another question: how many acres in North Dakota have gone unplanted this year due to water-related concerns, flooding or saturation? The answer is scary.

Tale of two ditches. Double ditches, technically

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This is a photo from nearly one year ago, taken from one of my favorite Missouri River vantage points: the old fence post at the north end of Double Ditch Indian Village. Pay close attention to this view, because…

…it now looks dramatically different, as can be expected with an astonishing amount of water coming down the valley. All the sandbars, trees, and backwater channels are now simply part of The Big Muddy.

By the way, photos like these just got harder to come by. The reason for that is right here: the ominous ROAD CLOSED sign. Like many scenic areas around Bismarck-Mandan, this area is now off limit to vehicles. Actually, I was surprised to find it open to the public a couple of nights ago when I came up here for some thunderstorm photos. Why, you may ask? Read on.

The cliffs of Double Ditch have been gradually succumbing to erosion for as long as I can remember. Large slabs of dirt occasionally simply fall into the river, and that’s when the mighty Missouri is at normal levels. Now that it’s four feet above flood stage an dmoving at several times its normal velocity, it just got more precarious. I put a camera on a pole and held it toward the edge for this photo, and I have no intention of going back.

It looks like a section of the cliffs further south has collapsed dramatically, opening up a chasm very near to the road. If so, that’s the most plausible reason for the closure. If not, it’s still a wise precaution given the instability of the park’s western edge. That’s not the area shown in the photo above; I didn’t want to walk that far. By the way, this photo was taken by holding out a pole with a camera on the end – I don’t have a death wish.

I highly recommend against getting curious because these cliffs are likely to recede even further as the river takes its toll. I guess the park is one more casualty of the Flood of 2011, even though it’ll never be under water.

Blockhouse Bikers

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I took my two precious little towheads out to Fort Lincoln last night for a picnic with Daddy…after which we dug out their Strider Bikes, compliments of the fine folks at KTM Cycle Hutt, and proceeded to blaze back and forth between the blockhouses. I took them up top in order to survey the flood situation, then it was back to the action. Boy, did they fall asleep FAST when I got ’em tucked in back at home!

Strider bikes are amazing little devices, because they teach your child how to ride a bike without training wheels in a matter of minutes. They have a low center of gravity, no pedals, and they are fun to ride fast! My three and four year old were cruising around naturally in minutes after we took their bikes out of the box and put the wheels on.

Now, when it comes time for them to ride a two-wheeled pedal bike without training wheels, they’ve already trained their bodies to handle all the balance and coordination with the exception of the pedals. They only have one action to learn. Cool, huh?

Don’t take my word for it, head over to Scheels and check one out for yourself. I know others who’ve got one of these “pre-bikes” and their children love them and learned quickly. Then you can enjoy places like these with children who can get from point A to point B happily and in style!

Poor Corps…it’s been a bad week for PR. How much do we trust ’em?

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While I won’t join the cacophony of detractors claiming that the Army Corps of Engineers should have possessed some sort of “crystal ball” to foresee the weather conditions which have brought us to this point, I do think they need a remedial lesson in being forthcoming. I have a hard time believing that they didn’t know that a 55kcfs release rate would not eventually have to be throttled up to the 150kcfs rate. Burleigh County Commissioner Mark Armstrong has been trying to wring details out of them without result, leading to distrust and wild theory.


One of the theories making the rounds out there is the one I just linked above using Scribd: It’s a man who has spent plenty of time around the Missouri River system and claims that Fort Peck Dam is like a “first domino” (those words are mine) in a potentially greater failure which could cut a deep swath through a good portion of the Midwest.


Then you get the photo posted above on the Corps’ own Flickr feed. It shows one of their people pounding in a warning sign and fence near Fort Peck while the bank crumbles into the lake behind them. That’s reassuring, isn’t it?

Granted, the Shanks fella who I referred to a couple of paragraphs back has two strikes against him: first, he works for an environmentalist advocacy group; and second, he has an upcoming book release on this very subject. What better way to drum up interest? He does, however, raise some interesting questions.


Then, of course, you have to wonder about this: an emergency bid being put out for the material which reinforces the Fort Peck Dam, the very one Mr. Shanks claims is the weak link and which is already at 111% of its flood control capacity.

These would likely be defused as a “smoking gun” if the Corps would simply be a little more forthcoming. I know there are some answers which nobody can have on hand, but I find myself sitting here wondering when the 175kcfs shoe is gonna drop. If it does, we’ve got some serious issues to deal with.

The local dikes are built with the mantra “twenty point six plus one” in mind. Suppose the Corps chooses to, or is forced to, increase releases past the 150kcfs mark? Could we build all of those levees even higher still, even if we wanted to? And that leads me back to my original question: why did our local officials even take them at their word in regard to the 150kcfs number, after they’ve constantly moved the goal posts on us?

While Garrison is down a bit, Fort Peck’s inflows are 150% of their outflows…and again, that reservoir is at 111% of Flood Control storage capacity without the spring runoff even starting yet. If the Corps has a plan for this mess, I think they need to be forthcoming with answers to people’s concerns. I still think that anyone who relies on the Corps’ current numbers to have any finality is fooling themselves.

I’m not trying to feed the rumor mill here, so don’t take this post the wrong way. What I am saying is that there are a lot of really inconvenient tidbits of partial information floating around out there, and they can really be used to feed the hysteria if treated improperly or if people are left to try to find their own information and let their imaginations wander.

And if you haven’t already thrown the kids and the photo albums in the car and fled screaming for the hills, you may wish to read this recently posted response by the man in charge of the Omaha District of the Army Corps of Engineers, posted on the Bismarck city website.

Despite that recent assurance, I think the Army Corps of Engineers needs to be more forthcoming while attempting to reassure people that they do have a plan in detail. As far as the people who have decided that Bismarck and Mandan are building to the “twenty point six plus one” is the end of our dike-building, I wish only to remind them how quickly 55,000cfs turned into 150,000cfs…only a matter of days. They need to try to keep the Corps accountable, and if further planning and preparation are needed this is the time to make sure that they happen.

Welcome to Bismarck-Mandan, home of the No-Fly Zone

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Just in case you thought you might find a way to hop a flight with a pilot friend and get your own birds-eye view of the flooding situation, I thought I’d pass along this little tidbit: Bismarck-Mandan is a no fly zone for air traffic below 5000 ft MSL, shown in the red area above.

The FAA put out NOTAM (Notice To AirMen) 1/6326 on June 5th with very specific instructions that really don’t leave local pilots much room. My guess is that they fear that the same bunch of lookey-loo gapers that caused traffic jams from one end of the metro area to the other will find a way to take to the air, and that causes a hazardous situation over an area where a rescue is a near-certain impossibility.

Oh yeah…right before that they issued NOTAM 1/6325, which declares the same sort of thing around Garrison Dam. So if you thought it’d be really keen to hop in a puddle-jumper and do some circles around the dam to satisfy your curiosity, guess again!

You can find the two NOTAM bulletins on the FAA website here:

FAA NOTAM 1/6326 (Bismarck-Mandan)

FAA NOTAM 1/6325 (Garrison Dam)

Spotted at the Roadhouse

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After enjoying an AMAZING bacon cheeseburger with my beautiful wife on a date night earlier this week, I came out to the parking lot to see this colorful beast adorning the parking lot. Naturally, being the curious sort, I had to check it out. Apparently the little bird in the bottom left of this photo was quite taken with the color as well.

This truck belongs to artist Scott LoBaido, who is currently painting US flags across America. Being one of the fifty states (fifty-seven, if you’re President Obama), it makes sense that we’d be on the list. Mr. LoBaido has a few claims to fame according to his website, such as the “World’s Largest Flag” painting.

I don’t really know what to say about the foil-covered manikin, other than that the flag it’s holding is a little tattered and in need of retirement. I sure do appreciate a good patriotic gesture, though, and I’m glad to see Old Glory every time I see her wave. Thanks to this colorful artist, that’s a sight more likely to be seen.