North Dakota Lake Sakakawea State Park Aug 11 - 18, 2015

  Lake Sakakawea State Park, North Dakota is the last state park we are visiting this summer.  We enjoyed this park very much.  There were lots of day trips to take around the countryside and we did go kayaking once.

Lake Sakakawea State Park, North Dakota

I love this picture of the straw bales in this field.

The color is outstanding.

We found these three antelope standing in this wheat field.

Here is a bigger picture of two of them.

A shot of our campsite from across the open field.

Kay and I enjoyed this campsite it was very quiet during the week.  Now the weekends are another story all the sites would be filled with local people.

Kay waiting for me to get back to finish a game of farkle.

It is hard to see, but all the little white spots are butterflies.  The one day there were thousands of them flying across the field it kind of looked like a snow flurry.

Here is a close-up of the butterflies.

A look at the lake through the trees.

The state park marina

Marty sitting on the boat dock waiting for Kay to get back from parking the pickup.  He needs a little help into his kayak.

My second time in the kayak after the knee replacement.  It sure was good to be in it again.

We came across this flock of geese on the back side of one of the small islands we kayaked around.

Kay told me to take a picture of them taking flight as she charged the flock.

This shot is of them taking off.

I did get them in flight.  Not a bad shot if you ask me.

We kayaked down to the end of this finger of the lake.  It was about two miles from our starting point.

A view of some of the shore line.

Of course, Kay had to take many pictures of flowers.  Here are a few of them.  Overall there haven't been too many flowers in North Dakota.

My best kayaking buddy.

We thought we could borrow this little boat for the afternoon, but nobody was around to give me the key.  Darn!

On one of our many drives around the countryside, we stopped here for a visit.

Marty and the dogs.  They stopped and waited for Kay in the shade of a big tree.  The temp that day was in the high 90's.

This is the outside of one the earthen lodges used by early Native Americans.  It was quite cool once you got inside of the structure.

The following pictures, Kay took inside the lodge.

Pretty cozy if you ask me.

The Moeller Family

The North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, operated by the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation, interprets the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with a special focus on the winter they spent at Fort Mandan. 

The following are views from inside the Center.

Here is a local farmer selling his produce in the parking lot of the Interpretive Center.

This National Wildlife Refuge was just east of our campground.  The gravel road wound around the wetlands and the lake.

This is the back side of the Visitor Center

The gravel road wandered around the wetlands and Lake Audubon.  Was a very nice drive of about 10 miles.

Some Canadian Geese on Lake Audubon

We believe this is a young bald eagle.

All the little islands were caused by the rising water of the lake after the dam was put in.

A couple of ducks

I had to blow this one up to show you that is is a female wood duck.  You can tell by the purple feathers on the tip of her wing.

We found this turkey running along the road as we exited the refuge.

On Monday, Kay and I toured three of the coal facilities.
North American Coal Freedom Mine
Antelope Valley Station Power Plant
Dakota Gasification Company
We were not allowed to publish any of the pictures we took while we were on the tour of the mine.  The following pictures are from their website on the Internet.

This is one of the drag lines used to remove the dirt from the top of the coal bed.  It is run by electricity.

This front end loader can fill the 100 ton truck with three scoops.

The second plant we toured was the Antelope Valley Station power plant

Dressed for the tour.  We look like a couple space cadets.

It took a lot of engineers and many years to construct this model of the plant.  They took each section of the model to the field to see how to build it.  Marty was very impressed with the model.

A look at the finished plant.

This is the bottom on one of the boilers.

The yellow pipes carry the high presser steam to the generators.

Here we are standing in front of one of the massive generators.

More of the massive piping in the plant.

The main control room for the plant.  There are always two operators on duty 24/7.

High pressure steam is used to turn the generators, Here is a display of the turbine blades used.  the blades are over 12 feet tall.

At the top of the building are windows to see all around the plant.

A view of the blue building from across the evaporation ponds is the power plant.

Looking at the evaporation ponds from the high windows of the plant.

The only thing left from the electric generation system is this pile of pot ash.  The plant is also selling it for use in making roads and other products for the oil field industry.

Dakota Gasification Company

The last plant on our tour is the Dakota Gasification Company, a for-profit subsidiary of Basin Electric Power Cooperative.  The Synfuels Plant is the only chimerical-scale gasification facility in the United States that manufactures natural gas, and other products.

They would not let us take any pictures at the plant, and the only place we got to see was a massive model of the plant.  And it was very massive, and again I was very impressed.