Out and about in North Dakota

 

Rape /Canola field

Highway sign

Big Walleye in Garrison

roadsideamerica.com said there was a hot and a cold water tower side by side in Garrison but it looks like the city had just taken the cold tower down right before we got there.  Bummers.

Statue at golf course by Garrison.  He's only 15' tall.

 

We were looking for a mine interpretive attraction and went down a gravel road.  Then we went of on an even skinnier road that crossed over the railroad track.  The road turned and crossed back over the track.  In this photo we are on one crossing and you can see the other.

We did find the mine interpretive site.  Next photos are closer views of the information.

Double click to enlarge for reading.

We decided to zip through the town of Zap, ND.  Nice Z on the hill.

I tried to determine what kind of crop this was and came to the conclusion it was probably dry beans or sunflower plants of some variety.

Rusty the Turtle in Turtle Lake, ND

East of Underwood, ND we came upon the Kelkirk Coal Mine.  This is one of the little coal trucks.

This is one of the newer big coal trucks.   They haul 240 ton of coal.  The front wheels turn sideways.  Only  Quite a distance in the background is a dragline. 

Just to give you some idea of the size of the truck, here's one passing a tractor doing road maintenance.

This is a Marion dragline excavator.  They cost approximately $50 to 100 million.  The boom is probably 200' long.  It's bucket fills one of the coal haulers in a single scoop.  Just say it's really, really big.   In 2014 we saw the bucket from Big Muskie, the largest dragline excavator ever made.   You could park two Greyhound buses side by side in it.   A month ago we were at a site where we could have driven our car into a dragline bucket.

The tail looked so funny.  We were disappointed to see the amount of trash inside the turtle.  There wasn't a way to go inside to clean it out either.

I'd never seen a barn like this before.

The Mexican, Canadian and US flags.