Bakken Fail....Trucking accidents in North Dakota

The Bakken Oilfields, or the Bakken for short, is that crazy place up in North Dakota you hear about from time to time. The Bakken formation is actually a huge oil deposit the sits under the states of Montana, North Dakota, two Canadian Provinces, and even some of South Dakota. They kept doing ground surveys while I was up there and the amount of oil under all that land just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Before I left I was reading an article that they had found even more oil under the current formation. Eat your heart out Middle East!

I drove a truck while I was up there. I hauled miles of pipe, huge portable buildings and large tanks down those dusty and muddy roads of North Dakota. I learned real fast you have to have some respect for the road conditions up there, and the crappy roads too. One turn of your head and an inch of rift of the steering wheel and you are in the ditch faster than you can blink. You have to respect what you have on the back of your truck too, Those farm roads will loosen up your tie down straps in 500 feet or less.

The Spring thaw is almost a little worse than the winter driving conditions. The farm roads are mostly dirt and that crap when it starts to thaw is the slipperiest and most unpredictable stuff you could ever drive on. You may think you are driving straight down that slippery farm road, but the crown they put on that road will push you to the edge in a heartbeat.

You can't be in a hurry on these road. You can't be impatient on these roads, and you can't be a knucklehead on these roads. You will get tore up or dead just like that. It was a daily occurrence to see a truck like this or worse.

   This stuff is still happening today, and if you toss your truck in a ditch or burn it up it will end up on a happy place on Facebook.

I think it was sometime in the Summer of 2012 I discovered a Facebook page called Bakken Oilfield Fail of the Day. Some of the stuff you see on there are just over the top crazy. Some of it heartbreaking tragedy. The shear comedy of some of the pictures of modified vehicles and cows down in the flame pits on well sites is priceless.

This Page has a huge following. You can't do anything remotely odd or stupid up in the Bakken without the wheels or your truck sticking in the air showing up on that page. I would get texts with links to this page showing some truck that turned and ran over a stop light pole, or turned too early and the back end of his trailer is all twisted in the ditch, and I had passed that very accident on my travels.

I think my favorite is always the side dump trailers that dump on the soft shoulder of the road and the whole truck goes over the side. So much of this is preventable, but it is a fast paced environment and you lose focus on what these roads can do to you.

This web page probably does the Bakken a great service posting all this craziness, hopefully reminding many a driver to be careful up there! I must mention that the comments are probably the best part the site. Although sometimes crude, it is some of the best free comedy on the internet. On the tragedies you do see that most of these rough and tumble people truly have heart that shows in their comments.

While working up there I saw a great many beautiful thing, but the sharp contrast was always the accidents.
There is so much truck traffic up there that at times there were diesel fuel shortages. I talk to one guy at a fuel supply company and between him and one other guy they had pumped something like over 50 million gallons of fuel in a year.

Let me tell you what these roads can do. Eat you alive is the simple way to put it. I can remember driving down muddy roads and trying to steer away from the edge of the road  and just sliding straight towards it. You have to push in the clutch to get the back wheels from pushing you sideways in that slick crap.

I have just pulled my truck onto sites and my front wheels sink in to the ground up to the bumper and have to be pulled out with a loader. I have had mud so bad that I had to actually toss my truck into the ditch to keep it from going on it's side.

The first freeze is a great time of entertainment. Even the locals who have lived there all their lives are not immune from this fun. Family vans and station wagons on there roofs, Welders and Mechanics trucks with their tool scattered all over the middle of the road and their wheels pointing skyward. The roof of some poor Honda protruding out of one of North Dakotas ubiquitous Kettle Lakes. All of this because they don't slow down for the weather after spending a whole summer flying down these roads and forget the dangers of that Ice.

The way they make roads up there is ridiculous. On the dirt roads they heap earth up from the sides of the roads and pile it in the center making this huge slopes to either side of the road. I know they need this for water run off, but why so much?

I'm not sure what the ground has in it but there are so many places on the dirt and paved roads where there is these huge sags in the road. You can tell where they are from all the skid marks from the truckers drop down tag axles hitting the pavement. They can toss any vehicle around a great deal.

The paved roads up there are some of the skinniest pieces of crap you have ever seen. Some of them, the white edge line is painted on the pavement drop off. That pavement drop off can be a good 5" sometimes and can suck a truck off the road frighteningly fast.

God forbid you are driving a truck with walking beam suspension and the back end instead of the front wheels get sucked off the road. I was driving on a road in a fuel truck one time and had the back end get sucked off. It damn near sent us sideways. Thank the Lord there was no on coming traffic, when I got the truck straight again I was in the wrong lane. That type of heavy duty suspension kind of pivots some and in the right condition can really shift the back end of the truck to one side. You see those a lot on cement and dump trucks

Now the real horror story. Thank goodness Bakken fail wasn't around then or I would have been on it's page as a poster boy for FAIL.

I had only been there in North Dakota a little less than 4 months and was about to go home for the Holidays.
It was the day after my birthday. A couple of weeks after that first incident my partner was driving and the back wheels got sucked off the road. it caught the poor guy totally off guard. We were in a fuel truck with a half empty tank and when my partner tried to correct, it made the rear suspension pivot in the opposite direction and amplified the correction and caused an uncontrollable fishtail. It was over on the third swing sideways. The truck swung hard enough to the side that the truck rolled. I cannot tell you what a horrible feeling it is to be in something that large and it is rolling over to your side.

As we started to roll I leaned into the center of the cab and grabbed onto the steering wheel. That probably saved my life because my door flew open. It was sickening to feel the truck going over for a second time. We came to rest in a ditch next to an oil well pad. The truck was on its side and my poor partner was hurt and hanging from his seat belt. I got myself unbuckled and had to lift him with my back and legs enough to get him unbuckled. We exited the truck through the front windshield. I got my partner out and he laid down on the ground, pretty messed up from being smashed into the roof.  I got back up to turn off the key in the truck I didn't want a fire. My eye glasses were missing and I couldn't see real well.

I must have looked like a shock victim after that. I was trying to find my phone so I could call my boss but it wasn't in the truck or in the street where I wondered around squinting looking for it. My cheesy trak phone was still in my pant pocket so I had to call the only company number I had in it and tell them to get a crew out here because we created a mess.

We got taken by ambulance to the local Hospital. My poor partner who was laying on the ground as the ambulance arrived. He was asking me why he was so cold. I had to assure him it was ok because he was laying in some snow. He was out of work for a couple of weeks to heal after that.

I might as well tell you about the funny part of this accident. I get put in a hospital room and they are checking me over. The doctor comes in. He is a foreigner. Nice guy and all but he did something that shocked everybody in the especially me before he left the room. He was asking me if I had any pains and was checking me for broken bones. He looked over the lump on my head.

He is finishing up and says in broken English that I look ok and that should be ok. Next he grabs onto the fold in my pants right where my crotch is and says, "At least you didn't break this". The nurse gasps and looks over one of the paramedics and says, "Oh lord I can't believe he just did that".  I'm from California and have seen a few weird things from people in my life, and here I am in the middle of the bible belt and being shocked by this doctor.  I looked at the nurse and shook my head.

Not long after that my girlfriend calls. I answer and she asks "How I'm doing?" I'm thinking she just got ESP or someone may have called her, but wasn't sure. I questioningly asked her what she knew. She gets a little mad from my weird way of asking.

"I'm asking about your head!" The day before on my birthday I had been hit in the hard hat by an overhead door. I had to inform her I was in the Hospital and that we had just been in a roll over accident in one of the trucks. She is such a good girlfriend. She got very concerned and almost started crying and I assured her I was just sore and that I was alright.

We were lucky that nothing worse than some bashed ribs and bumped heads was all we got. Since that day I have been a very cautious driver. That accident happened in about 5 seconds. You have to be on your guard up there.

Thank goodness no oncoming traffic was involved, and a hearty thanks to the people first on the scene.

Drivers if you are thinking of going to work in North Dakota beware! It can happen to you. Let's be careful out there. Be safe so we can all go home to our families.
Thanks    

Tagus Triangle...The Mystery and some fiction

After I started up in North Dakota, I started driving one of the vans into work for some extra money and some less sleep. As I have said before it was an 80 mile drive from Minot out to the oil fields. We would leave the yard at 5am and not get back until 7 or 8 pm sometimes. I would drive a van full of sleeping oil construction workers.

I can't tell you how hard it is to drive 14 people for 80 miles while they sleep.  I'm a sleep psychic, if there is someone sleeping in the car with me I can read their sleepy mind and want to sleep.  The power of 14 sleepy people is like Kryptonite on Superman....lol

I would have coffee with me and play something annoying on the radio, NPR to piss me off, or Coast to Coast to listen to all the UFO, Bigfoot, Chemtrail people talk about their hobbies. I saw some cool stuff out there on the prairie in the early mornings, a nice Lunar Eclipse one night, and the Aurora Borealis dipped way down south and we got a cool light show.  Kept and eye out for cows and other animals, snowy owls are cool if you can see them. But I never saw a UFO or Bigfoot...grin  Coast to Coast for those of you not familiar with late night radio is one of the most listened to late night radio shows in America. It focuses on mostly the paranormal and conspiracy with a sprinkling of normal stuff. It's topics can drive you nuts, but they can keep you awake while driving, with their madness.

There was a little anomaly that I notice one dark morning. I tend to watch the mile markers so I know where I am on road. Just outside of a town called  Berthold ND there is something out of whack with the mile markers.

But first I need to tell you about Tagus ND.  I think I have mentioned it in an earlier post. In Berthold there is a sign with the distance to the next town ahead.

That is the sign post up ahead we are entering the Tagus Zone.  I looked up Taugus ND on Google and it came up with some fun stuff.  It is mostly a ghost town, just a few residence left at this point. It is a destination on the sign above but there is no sign directing you after 9 miles.  Taugus has a spooky story to tell though.

Urban Legend has it that the old church had been used as a place of satanic worship and that there was a stairway to hell in the basement.  Read some of the comments on this site Ghost of North Dakota.  I guess the local kids liked going out there back in the 80's and there ghost stories ballooned into the urban legends that are today. It is unfortunate that vandals burned the Tagus Lutheran Church down.

I'm interested in ghost towns, I love going and seeing the old homes and buildings, nostalgia junkie I guess. Because we couldn't ever find Tagus, we started calling it the Tagus Triangle when we found this next anomaly.

There is a problem with the mile markers on Highway 2 west of Berthold ND.

 One night I had just passed this mile marker, and a tenth of a mile later my high beams where making the next mile marker glow green.  I though I must really tired for a mile to go that fast. When I saw the next mile marker number I knew I was really friggen tired.

But wait, I really hadn't gone that far in that amount of time.  The Strong Kum and Go coffee was working it's wonders on me. (yes there is a convenience store named Kum and Go, I started calling it the "unfortunately named Kum and Go" after I got there)
That night on the ride home I came over the rail road bridge, you can barely make it out on the left in the photo. I came to marker 117 and made note of  the odometer numbers and only 8 tenths of a mile went by when we hit the 120 marker....what the?

For the next couple of weeks any victim that sat shot gun with me got treated to the mile marker mystery.  It was very funny when a couple of months later I'm riding shotgun and the driver, a new guy, started telling me to watch the mile markers and he was telling me my story...lol

Another thing about this area is the ICBM's  There are hundreds of missile silos dotting the land scape of northwest North Dakota.  You are driving along and there is a road sign that says I-8 thru 11 that way, the missile numbers, and next to the road there is a fenced off area with all this surveillance equipment and the no trespassing signs.  Occasionally you will see a Military Humvee with a 50 caliber gun on the roof in front of these areas or on a hill nearby keeping an eye on a site from afar.

When they move one of these missiles they are all business.  Military Police and armed Humvees on the road in front and behind a convoy.  They burst onto the highway without stopping and you better get out of the way.  The local sheriff usually runs blocker for them.

With all that missile/ Air Force activity and the mile marker anomalies and my joke about it being the Tagus Triangle I came up with a tall story for my friend one night. They never change the mile markers to fix them because they are in the right place but the military has a secret base there and they have some sort of break in time and space there and we pass through it and don't even know it.  My friend laughed and said I should blog about that story and "spin my tale" as he put it.

Here is my tall tale.

The Tagus Triangle
We start out at five every morning from a yard in Minot ND, and we head 80 miles west out onto the prairie to go work in the oil fields. My friend and I stopped and got some coffee as we left our house and our snacks for the day. Yesterday had been a warm day, but this morning there was the first hint of chill in the fall air. It wouldn't be long now and the prairie of North Dakota would be covered in snow and ice for the next 6 months. We got in our van, today was my turn to drive, and we headed out of town.

Highway 2, the western part, starts in Michigan and follows the route of the Great Northern Railway all the way to Everett Washington. As you leave Minot you head north up a valley that follows the Souris and Des Lac rivers and then finally pops you out onto the prairie where you travel through rolling land of wheat, soy, flax, and rapeseed better known a Canola, oh and cattle.

This morning was like all the rest for us Minot based oil workers.  Hour and a half drive west work our butts off for 10 to 12 hours then and hour and a half drive east back to home for some quick sleep and repeat that the next day. It was cool this morning so I had to run the heater for the first time in months.  That dusty unused smell hung heavy in the air for a while as we headed west.  The sky was clear and the stars were brilliant. I turned on the radio as everybody usually is knocked out and starte their snores, farts and mumblings. No Country right now, Definite no on NPR that my friend always listens to, AM was what I needed, a talk show to keep my mind from getting highway hypnosis.  Coast to Coast AM was still on, what was the topic for today. They were talking about the Mayan Calendar and this guy was saying the coming Dec 2012 end date didn't mean that the world was ending.  Finally something with some sense on this show.

I drove on listening to the show, the gentleman giving some interesting information on Mayan culture and beliefs. His proper Spanish accent made him sound very credible. We were coming up on the town of Berthold ND, you had to slow down from 70 mph to 50 there, the company had installed these little satellite tracking box in all the vehicles. It tracked you by GPS and if you speed it rats you our by emailing your boss on his smart phone. I usually would slow down late and set the email off going in and out of Berthold to wake the boss up, it was 5am after all and he shouldn't be sitting in bed lounging. I always tell him it is a lag in the cruise control slowing down and speeding up the van. He hates that answer.

There was the sign for Tagus 9 miles ahead. Berthold was one of the companies way points, if the weather or some other condition warranted it we were to stop there and hold until it cleared or head back to Minot and not risk the trip. Blizzards and heavy rain were huge problems here in North Dakota and could strand motorist very easily.

This is where the day took an unexpected turn, literally. Outside of Berthold was a oil tank farm and a set of railroad tracks  that you crossed and after that the speed limit went back to 70 mph, then 4 miles down the road there was an overpass that went over more railroad tracks and it was an almost straight shot to Stanley ND where we sometimes stopped to get some grub for breakfast.

After mile marker 120 the road starts to turn to make the hook to go up over the overpass. This morning there was something different about the turn. The dash on the van flashed ever so slightly and the cruise control had turned itself off. There was also a weird sensation the went over my body. A huge rush of absolute tiredness.

I was guiding the van around this curve that was a little sharper than normal and all of the sudden there was a lot of street lights overhead and I was coming up to a gate and guard shack. There was red lights and blue strobes flashing. I had the foggy view of what looked like the gate to a military installation.  There was a guard standing at the curb next to the shack he had his pistol out and pointing down and one hand out to halt me. He was talking on what looked like a microphone on a headset.

I had this hard urge to stop and I pressed the brake and held it there. We stopped.  The automatic locks popped up and the door was opened and the guard reached in and put the van in park, I tried to move my right arm to help him but I couldn't.

I could hear him talking, I guess on his headset, "the driver is still responsive, we may have to have him wiped".  That voice where have I heard it before, it was very familiar, like the hint of a voice that had grown up from a younger voice. I literally had to force my head to turn to look at the guards face. When I did that he looked very surprised and his eyes went wide with recognition. I knew this kid, well he was a good looking young man now.

"Ryan is that you?" I got the words out and my mind was starting to clear a little. It was just like fighting heavy road fatigue and you had to will yourself to stay awake. I knew Ryan Gamble pretty well, he was a once pudgy but starting to grow Boy Scout in my sons Troop over 5 years ago. He had camped with us in my son and I's tent a couple of times on outings. We helped him on his Eagle Scout Project, a very nice Forest Service help project that got him some good recognition in our local papers. After that he joined the Air Force with a lot of adventure ahead of him. He was tall and trim now, I was proud to see what he had become and that made it easier to make the fatigue go away.

"Mr Larsen!"
"Good to see you son, look at you, I'm very happy to see you"
I turned to introduce my friend to Ryan but he was out cold sleeping, I turned and looked behind me and the whole crew in the van was out cold too. It dawned on me right then that I was probably not suppose to be where ever I was right now. I turned back to Ryan he was talking into his headset.
"Captain I know the man at the gate sir, he is coming more awake by the minute, I can't explain it, he is not making any moves to exit the vehicle, I doubt if he will"
Ryan looked at me and held his hand up. "Mr Larsen please do not exit the vehicle"
I looked at him as he was about to close the door on me. "I shouldn't be here should I Ryan" I asked mildly.
The door closed and he shook his head no, at me.

I unwittingly rolled down the window, and caught more of his conversation with the captain at the other end of his radio. "Yes captain it is from the same company, you better get those tech people up here to fix this GPS device." there was a pause, "Yes Captain he is awake, he is being cooperative, but we will need to wipe him"
That is the second time he has said "wipe him". I was sure that he was not talking about my nose or my backside.
Ryan held his hand to his ear as if listening, "copy tech team en route, I will have the driver exit the vehicle for the wiping procedure".
I was looking around, maybe not the best idea considering where I might be. I could see something shimmering beyond the gate. It hid what was really behind the gate so someone that stumbled into this place wouldn't see much, but that little, for lack of a better term, porthole we had just come through would be enough to set anybody's curiosity on overdrive. What ever hid this place was way advanced stuff it must hide something pretty damn special.


A cylinder started coming out of the ground across the roadway from the gate. It had a door and it slid open and several armed men and some tech looking guys popped out the door. Ryan came back to the door and opened it.

"Please step out of the vehicle Mr Larsen"
"I hope I haven't got you into some trouble Ryan, I wouldn't want that to happen".
"Everything will be fine Mr Larsen we will fix a few things to correct this stupid problem and then.."
Ryan hesitated. "You and your crew will be on your way to work"

I nodded at him in understanding. I'm sure I still looked a little wide eyed. One of the tech guys came and put a laptop on the drivers seat, another tech opened the passenger door and pointed a strange gun looking device at the dash right over the motor compartment and some LED lights lit up on the gun.  The Tech with the laptop taped a key and said, "there is the code and frequency". He entered something into his keyboard then hit the enter key saying "sent". The guns LED's blinked and then turned green and the techs pulled out of the van and left for the door they came from. I hadn't notice but the armed men had stood on either side of Ryan and I.
Ryan nodded to the armed man behind me and he opened a door on the back of the guard shack. Ryan Guided me to the door. It was a small cubical with a chair and some sort of apparatus that I had to step around to sit down.

"Ryan this wipe you keep talking about will it hurt?"
"There is two parts to it Mr Larsen, one is the sleep inducer and then the image replacer"
"Ok Ryan which one hurts, you have walked around it son"
"I always liked you Mr Larsen, I'll give it to you straight.  The sleep inducer will hurt if you fight it, the image replacer will flash some images to replace the ones you have of your time here, the science on how it works I do not know. Some people show a flash of pain when the bright lights flash but it is gone in an instant"
"Thank you Ryan," I paused. "Do me a favor son, check on me in a few weeks and see how I'm doing. Surprise me at store or something. I live in Minot, will you do that for me?"
"I will see what I can do, you will be ok, our government has it's secrets but it is not in the business of doing harm to it's citizens, you know me sir, I wouldn't be here doing this if it would hurt you."
"Exactly what I thought son, thank you, you take care."
"Thank you sir, sit here and look and focus on this light"

I did as I was told. The wave of exhaustion hit me again, I let it happen. There was a flash that hit my eyes, it did hurt, I felt myself jerk, I was floating and then that horrible noise and feeling as you hit the side rumble strips on the side of the road, something like and echo voiced something in my head, The van just died guide it off the highway, stop put in park and try to start it"

That's what I was doing, I could see it, we were just before the over crossing and I guided the van to a stop on the side of the road. My friend woke up in the seat next to me. "What happened?"
"Van died" I told him. I had it in park and tried to start it, it came to life and I put it in gear and we headed off to work. As I pulled back on to the highway I looked back over my shoulder looking back towards where we came from. "That was so totally weird"
"What my friend asked"
"I don't know" I looked at the dash, "The dash blinked and the cruise control shut off and the van died"
I shook my head.
My friend switch position and mentioned I need to write up the issue and give it to the mechanic shop so they could look at it, and he was back asleep.
"It is probably just the type of crap that happens in the Tagus Triangle" I chuckled.
"Tagus Triangle" he mumbled and chuckled
We made it to the shop, my boss was mad that we were ten minutes late, I handed him the report to inspect the van and told him it had died outside of Berthold.  I wasn't sure how it could have made us that late.

I was at Walmart a couple of weeks later and a young man came up to me. He was lean and tall and had a military hair cut. I smiled. "Ryan is that you!?"
"Yes Mr Larsen what the hell are you doing way up here in North Dakota?"
"Working in the oil Fields, money is good"
"I'm stationed up at Minot Air Force Base" Ryan smiled and then asked "how are you doing?"
"I'm doing great, maybe eating too well" tapping my belly, "but doing well"
"Mr Larsen give me your phone number and we can go get a meal or something when we have some time"
We exchanged numbers. I'm so friggin stupid I should have not kidded with him. I gathered him in a fatherly hug telling him I was proud of him and then whispered. "I think that bright light gave me a tumor" I could feel him sag right there in my arms.
"Mr Larsen your sense of humor is failing you right now"
I knew by the look on his face how badly I had screwed up. "Are they listening" I asked
Ryan nodded his head. "I have vouched for you Mr Larsen don't make me regret it"
"I was just kidding Ryan, anyways what is there to tell, and I'm sure that is the way they want it"
Ryan screwed up his face and nodded again

I spent over a month with some heavy weight military brass telling them I wasn't a threat, I even talked to the inventor of the mind wipe/image replacer to find out what went wrong. They told me they would tell everyone I was crazy if I got to talking. They were all very discrete in their dealings with me and I got a few meal out of them. I got out of one General that kept a watch on me that our companies GPS tracking devices under the dash of our vans was triggering the porthole to open, and that they had finally reprogrammed all of them to get them to stop. I'm not sure how that porthole works or what that cloaking field is that covers that hidden base, but it is fantastic to think about. I guess none of our other drivers knew they had made that turn into the Tagus Triangle.

I have dinner with Ryan from time to time and he got me on the base one time to see the flight line of B-52's they have there at Minot Air Force Base, but we don't talk about what he really does. I don't think he knows what he really does and what is happening on that base. I'm proud of him though, I told the General I was proud of him.

On another morning as I passed by with the same van load of sleepy passengers and listening to Coast to Coast AM. The guest was talking about Area 51 and how there was a hidden UFO base there, he sounded ridiculous. I looked at the spot after mile marker 120 where I thought the porthole might be. I could go on Coast to Coast and tell them how I saw a top secret guard shack that is hidden on several square miles of North Dakota property and that the GPS in the van opened the porthole...where is it?...I don't know, you can't see it. What is on the base, I don't know you can't see it. No one would believe me!. 
The End

I hope you enjoyed the story...grin

The Trip home!...journey, adventure, car trouble

On the 19th of July we loaded up my stuff in the back of the 1992 Lincoln Town Car that I had left up in Minot ND.  I had put 2 new tires on the front and checked the fluids. We were ready! We hit the road in the morning and after about 11 hours made it to Livingston MT. We spent the night at a nice hotel and got a nice start and headed down through Yellowstone National Park and enjoyed the geysers and other Geological/Volcanic sights and then set off to Pocatello ID to go to the grave of my great grand father to get some pictures for my Ancestry dot come account. We spent the night at another nice hotel and got up and headed for the Cemetery. It was easy to find the grave site and get the pictures. We then fueled up and headed home. It was a great trip you should see all the pictures!
THIS DID NOT HAPPEN!

Yes we were ready. We started out early and started west.  I stopped and took some pictures for a blog posting I will do later and stopped in Tioga ND to show the cute girlfriend where I use to work. The car was running fine and all was good. We even stopped to take a scary picture for a friend.

This is a Man Camp in Williston ND, called Black Gold a friend of ours did his Intern-ship here. We posted it on Facebook and said "BOO"!  Well here Greg...BOO again....lol

The car. It is a 1992 Lincoln Town Car. It had 236,000 miles on the ODO when we left Minot. I packed the trunk and the back seat with most of the stuff I had accumulated in a year and a half of living in North Dakota. Some of it I had to disassemble to make it all fit.  After my mom's death my dad had given me this car because he didn't need two cars now. My good friend in North Dakota described the car best, "A large comfortable couch on four wheels".  My dad not to long ago had put a new motor and trans in the car and it was still running great. It has some age related issues but is still a nice car.

We were heading to Livingston MT to spend a night at the Comfort Inn there and go to Yellowstone the next morning, but the vacation gods and the adventure gods seamed to be in chaos or something. All was going well when all of the sudden the car dies going up this hill about 10 miles from Miles City MT.  I pop the hood and check things over and wonder if I have some bad gas because the car started right up a few minutes later. We drive on to Miles City and get some fuel and I throw in some fuel injector cleaner and some fuel additive thinking I let the car sit most of the winter on a half empty tank and I had some junk in it.

A note here, the car has a worn out part in the steering column which causes the starter switch to only partially engage, so the car doesn't always start on the first turn of the key.

We hit the road again and the car dies again. We are on the side of the road and it is over 90 outside.
It had died just as we passed a rest stop, so I get her running again and back it down into the rest stop to see if I could find the fuel filter on this boat, because it was acting like it was clogging up.  I text my brother because he had a Mercury Product similar to this car and I figure he might know where the filter was.  I couldn't find the filter and the brother was not returning the text.  We drove on and it died again, this time near an off ramp so I pulled down it. This is the sign half way down the ramp.

  I post this picture on Facebook and said this was not the off ramp to break down on in the middle of no where MT.  This is the picture cute girlfriend took of me for her Facebook.

Hang Dawg!...No Rocket Science Jokes Please!


I start looking up on my phone where the nearest Auto Parts Store is...thank goodness for smart phones and thank goodness that there was phone service with data.  I get a call from my brother and he gets me in the right direction for the fuel filter. We get to talking and I do the rhetorical question "why does this have to happen out here in BFE".  He of course answers the rhetorical question with a question.  "You know what kind of car you are driving don't you?"

He just had to remind me. For a little bit, if all you Ford fans can move by this section.

Yes Lincoln is part of the Ford Corporation, and us Chevy fans know very well what Ford stands for.
First
On
Race
Day
Is not it

In my experience it more often turns out to be..
Driver
Returns
On
Foot

or
Fix
Or
Repair
Daily.

I know the Ford Motor Company has been around for 100 years, and there are a lot of people that have had marvelous luck with their products.  I'm not one of them.

My friend in Minot called me not long after that in answer to my text to him on our current condition. I asked him again why he likes Fords. He laughed.

Well I called a local parts store to see if they could bring a fuel filter out, they said they couldn't but gave me the phone number to a guy that could. The number was to American Tow in Hysham MT, I talked to a nice gentleman there and he agreed that he could come out and even put the filter on for me. About 40 minutes later he arrived and went to work on the filter, he removed the filter and blew through it. No junk came out and it was not very restricted.  This is actually the bad news.

The gentleman's name was Wes and he is the owner of American Tow. He was rather familiar with the problem and described it for me. He said that the fuel pump in these vehicles get old and can't take the heat and either starts vapor locking or running low pressure in the heat and the motor finally starves for fuel.

We crossed our fingers and hoped it was just the filter. Thanked Wes, told him I would make him famous on my world famous Adventure Blog and hit the road.  We made it about 20 miles before it died again. Now knowing that it was a heat issue we would just let the car cool down and it would drive for another 10 miles or so. This was not good on a 90 plus degree day.  Cute girlfriend was slowly melting and not very patient with our predicament.  We needed to make it to Billings and hopefully find a shop that can work on the car.
It was still 40 miles away.  We drove for a while the car died we let it cool off. Repeat.  Finally it died near an off ramp that said it had services.  We let the pump cool down and got off the freeway.  We made our way down to this small community gas station and pulled in and got some cool drinks. There was no mechanic shop nearby.  There was a car wash there though and the cute girlfriend had the idea of washing the car down to cool it off. I did one better and totally hosed down the fuel tank to cool it off.

The fuel pump. Ford/Lincoln/Mercury in their infinite wisdom had designed the only fuel pump that is immersed in a tank of gas that can get hot. Pump surrounded by nice cooling gas, but then surround the tank with all the heat from the motor and the huge exhaust system and add to that 100 degrees baking upward from the road.  No forethought here. The cooling off was a good trick. We rolled on to Billings without a hick-up. Once in Billings I assessed that we were not going to make Livingston tonight. This sucked because I had ordered on Priceline dot Com a nice Hotel room for us. From there we were going to launch into Yellowstone for some site seeing. Cute girlfriend wanted to see the Old Faithful Lodge, well she wanted to stay there but the prices were through the roof on that gig.

I call the hotel there and  told them of our predicament and the lady at the front desk generously cancelled my reservation and gave me the number to their Hotel branch in Billings.  The people at the Comfort Inn were very nice to deal with and very helpful, and as always it is a nice room and they have a breakfast for you in the morning.

I water down the tank again in town and head for the Billings Comfort Inn. We get a room and pile into it and turn on the air conditioning. I call the Comfort Inn back in the town of Livingston to find out what the process is to get my money transferred back to my account.  She finds out I booked from Priceline and said it was up to them to get the money back from them...sigh  She gave me the cancellation number and I called Priceline.

I get a nice lady on the phone and she tells me that I have to pay a cancellation fee. I'm ok with this they offered a service and it is not their fault I'm having car troubles.  When she tells me how much the fee is my long trip heat stroked mind went into shock. I patiently asked for her supervisor. I explained my situation to her. I told her that I had been using Priceline dot Com since they started business and I don't mind paying a little fee to recoup their cost in this deal but not almost all my money. She called the Comfort Inn back in Livingston and seemed to get it all straightened out and refunded me all my money.
Kudos to Priceline for helping me out.  For a second there I thought I was going to have to take down Capt. Kirk to get some money from them...whew!.   All is well and I'm Happy to promote Priceline dot Com. I have received some awesome deals on flights and hotels over the years.

We were getting hungry. On the way to the Hotel we had noticed a Southern California Fast Food Staple, Del Taco!  It was within walking distance of our room.  We hadn't had Del Taco in ages so I walked over and got us some. 

I spend some time before bed looking up my Auto Repair options in Billings MT.  Found a Sears Auto Center not to far from the Hotel.  We got up around 8 and had some breakfast in the lobby and packed up and headed to Sears.  Luck was not with us once again.  Sears does not do much car work anymore. The guy there suggest a place way down the street. Oh I forgot to tell you it is Saturday to make things worse.
We go down to this other shop and the guy said he could do the job but he probably couldn't do it that day because he was a man short and people were already in ahead of me. Strike Two!

I was in a daze. What was plan B?  Press on and do the water the tank thing for the next 600 miles. Get stuck here until Monday, a very bad option for cute girlfriend she need to be at work then.  We ended back up near the Hotel and I saw a Ford Dealership.  They had one of those Quick Lane Express Lube Centers there. I can not tell you how expensive hourly rates at the dealers are.  They could do it and we found and available part nearby. They said worst case would be that they could have it done by 5pm, if all went well earlier.

Poor Cute Girlfriend is seeing us getting home later and later and is getting a little worried. I set her up in the customer lounge with the Laptop and get her on the Ford WiFi. It worked great!

I paced back and forth waiting for the car to go in. A slot opened up and the part arrived and the job actually went better than planned. Usually you have to pull the tank down to get at these fuel pumps.
The guy running the shop was actually a good technician and had done one of these not too long ago. He moved some things out of the way and with a little arm stretching was able to get the pump in. The Adventure gods where maybe showing pity on use.  We were out by noon. Almost 500 bucks too...sigh

Cute girlfriend had seen a Cracker Barrel near the freeway and wanted to stop because she had never been in one. We looked over the great bunch of Americana in their gift shop and almost bought some Red Solo Cup string lights. Time to hit the road

I tell the Lincoln that there will be no more trouble for the rest of the trip and we make for I-90 west. It is warm again and the AC is not blowing as cold as she should. We make it to Livingston ok, although the car did a couple of quiet hick-ups just to keep me worried. I'm thinking I can charge the AC and get us some cool air in the car, but all the auto parts stores are closed in Livingston.  There was a Yellowstone area Gift shop next to the gas station we stopped at, and cute girlfriend got some things.

We pressed on to Bozeman MT. I sweated when we pulled into town. I had already broke down here one time and I didn't want it to happen again. I saw a Walmart from the freeway and thought I could get what I needed to charge the cars AC there. This is and old car so I would need some new style AC charging adapters to make this work. I buy what I need and get under the hood and Ford Fails again.  There is only Lincoln Serviceable stuff here and while I was trying see what was wrong with the adapters I let the last of the freon out.  Kind of like Lucy pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown...AAAH!

I had to take all the stuff back in and get my money back.  It is about 6pm and we are once again hot and tired. Cute girlfriend suggest we just stop here and call it a day, I suggest we try to shoot for Butte MT to make some miles today and start driving in that direction hot and miserable and dejected. I start doing the  math after I see a miles to Butte sign. We would get there real late and I just wasn't up to it so we stopped at the next town west of Bozeman and pulled into a Super 8 Motel. We get our gear in and go to a restaurant that was suggested at the front desk.  Fail!! Restaurant Closed for some festival back in Bozeman!

Serendipity! we go off in search of place to eat and hoping we don't have to go to the truck stop.  We spin into the old part of this town and right by the railroad tracks we find a sign that says BBQ.  It is in some old rail side storage type building with a dirt parking lot.  This BBQ was the best thing that had happened so far on this return adventure. It lightened our spirits some.  The food was good and I even got one of their Micro Brews to take with me back to the Hotel room. I drank my beer and cute girlfriend use the hotel hot tube for a few minutes. We went to bed.

We got up early and had what Super 8 calls their breakfast. Once frozen hard boiled eggs and cereals and coffee.  We pull out of the driveway and the car slips into neutral for a second. I know what this is. This poor old car has a leak in one of the cooling lines. I can see the oil coming out from under the car in small dots but never can find where it comes from. I stop and get some trans fluid and top it off and hit the I-90 again. I got us up to 75 and we stayed that way most of the way to Butte.

We had seen some signs and picked up a brochure for a candy store in some town west of Butte somewhere called Phillipsburg. I finally see a sign for it and there is a rest stop at the off ramp to this place.  I ask the cute girlfriend if she would like to go there. We needed to do something fun on this trip from hell.

She agreed. After using the rest stop we turned left onto this Montana Scenic Byway heading towards Phillipsburg. We haven't gone a mile when a sign saying "Opportunity" with an arrow pointing to the right passes us.  Cute girlfriend says "now that is a sign we should take a picture of" naturally there is no where to turn around to go get it. I used one from the web though.






Thank you opportunitymontana.worldpress.com for the image.
Just when we think that Opportunity has passed us by another town sign comes up.


Thank you Allen Russell.
I hoped this was a good sign for our little excursion.
We went through another town Anaconda and started up into the hills and passed a few inviting lakes and finally made it to Phillipsburg. We took a walk around this old Montana mining town. Old brick buildings from the late 1800's and landed at our destination. The Sweet Palace. It was a very sinful place for people with sweet tooth's and having just made our minds up to start the low carb diet....lol

It had tons of hard candy and a big taffy puller in the window.  There was a guy up front running a very antique taffy wrapping machine. That was fun to watch. Cute girlfriend bought some fudge and got me some dark chocolate with cashews in it. It was a fun stop.

We make it back to I-90 and start the trek home again. We stop in Missoula MT for gas and a bite to eat.
It is here that the final nail in the hell that is this trip hit. Cute girlfriend can't find her debit card. I call the Sweet Palace.  They have the card.  That card is where all the money is right now.  I use my smart phone to move some cash out of savings to get us home. I had them mail her card to the house and a few days later it showed up thank goodness.

We trudge on and finally pass over a high mountain pass and drop into Idaho. The panhandle of Idaho is filled with old Mining towns from the 1800's and just before the Washington state line you pass by beautiful lake Coeur d'alene and then plop into Spokane WA.

The GPS was giving me a route after Spokane that took us all the way to the outskirts of Seattle and slipped us back through Tacoma. I had it in my head that if we went down the southern route almost the way we came up by train and stay on the Washington side I would probably save a few miles and it would be a hell of a lot cooler.

When you hit the Columbia River you can take the freeway on the Oregon side or take highway 14 on the Washington side. We had been riding in a 90 degree car most of the afternoon so I figured when we started seeing pine trees it would cool off.

I like this route it is very scenic and you get to pass by Stonehenge. You also get to go by the place that Sam Hill Built. Yes that Sam Hill.  Stonehenge is a replica of the original and is a War Memorial, I haven't seen it yet but I hope too.  Stonehenge is also at a place called Mary Hill and there is a place that Sam Hill built and is now an Art Museum and they both over look the Columbia River.

Cute girlfriend has some bad memories from this area so she was not enjoying that part of the trip.  She was impressed on how much had changed since she was last through. It was evening and we were almost home so we didn't stop. Someday I want to do some things in that Columbia River Gorge. I can't wait.

We made it home around 7pm and sat down and breathed a sigh of relief.  Not the best time spent off.
I now have a nice Lincoln Town Car for sale....look for it on Craig's List

Adventure to North Dakota...not a great trip

On July 15th the cute girl friend and I left for North Dakota. I had left some stuff there and needed to get it and bring it back. I had left an old Lincoln Town Car there in hopes of selling it there. I had one guy that was low balling me on the price so I didn't sell it. In hind sight I should have just taken the offer but I hate people who say they are coming with the money but only bring some small amount, usually close to half and think you will just let them have it and get the deal done.

So we needed to go to North Dakota and pick up this car and the other sundry items I had accumulated in 18 months of living there. Luckily that Lincoln has a huge trunk and back seat so that stuff would fit in it. I like traveling by train and it is more than half price than flying and a little less stressful for me. So I bought the tickets a month a head of time.  We set out with all our luggage for the one mile walk to the Train Station here in our town. I took this pic of the cute girl friend with all the luggage.

I posted on Facebook that I was busy playing Angry Birds or something and made her carry all the luggage. It was a good gag.  I actually carried the 2 back packs and my suit case. Poor cute girl friend. Her foot had been bothering her lately and the fact that her good shoe had just broke and she had new ones on didn't make this walk much fun....plus I walk too fast! As trains will do, the local Cascades train was 30 min. late, and we sat in the station for a while. Our true launch point was from Vancouver Wa. on the Empire Builder Amtrak train that goes from Portland Or to Chicago IL. It was a little bit of a wait so we tried our hand at getting Dominos Pizza to deliver to the Vancouver train station. The girl on the phone said she had lived here a long time but didn't know where the train station was. This station has to be almost 100 years old.

You know me I like it because it is a Craftsman. So we get a pizza delivered to the station.  We had more waiting of course, because the train from Portland, which is maybe 6 miles away, is 15 min late. We finally load up and our journey has started. The Trip from Vancouver to Minot should take 29 hours. The seats on the train are reasonably comfortable. They are kind of like recliners and you can kind of sleep on them. A train starting off late or thrown off it's schedule is a bad thing. Competing with freight trains for track and your train not where it is suppose to be causes the train schedule to get later and later.

I like this train ride because of the sites you can see as you travel down the tracks. From Vancouver you start heading east and the tracks follow the Columbia River to as far as Kennewick Wa. We were on the last coach car at the back of the car and next to us is a nice lady Conductor.  She was a good humored older African-American woman and we would chat with her as she sat down when she wasn't working. The Car behind us was the sleeper car, those have rooms and beds and some have toilets en suite. Those are rather pricy, but they have some perks. Price includes all your meals, some of them brought to your room by a Steward, they also get to be part of a Wine Tasting during the trip.

In the old days of travel when most of it was by train, and there was a large number of Train Companies instead of just Amtrak, the routes had special names like "The City of San Fransisco", "Meteor", "Hiawatha", "Empire Builder".  Names have come and gone in the railroads long history and when Amtrak was formed in 1971 the Empire Builder stayed as it always has been since 1929.

So we left Vancouver and started east, The route takes us up the Columbia River and through the Columbia River Gorge, where the sites are very beautiful. You pass by several dams and locks. See eagles and tons of ducks. There are several good tunnels you go through if you are into that type of thing. The Gorge is a very interesting place one of my new favorites here in Washington.

This is a picture of the Gorge I took a few months ago. You will notice a prominence to the left, in the distance, that is Beacon Rock.  I hear there is a trail that will take you to the top of that rock. As for the train, they built a tunnel that goes right through Beacon Rock. I took a picture in Sepia to see how it would turn out.

 The train leaves Portland around 5pm, usually....lol.  In the summer up here there is daylight until just past 9pm or later, so we were able to see a lot of scenery heading out of the Gorge.  As you head east you can see where all that Pacific Northwest rain stops falling. Trees turn to grass, and the Gorge turns into Prairie.  There are adventures to be had in the Gorge and someday we will go enjoy them.

The Gorge is also a favorite place for Wind and Para Surfers. The prairie heats up during the day and that air rises and draws cool air up the tight Gorge and you get great conditions for Windsurfing. Sometimes the water is full of hundreds of colorful sails.  The crazy thing is that if the wind is blowing in the Gorge the waves start building up and you can see these windsurfers fly into the air off these waves and eat it wildly.  Wind was calm so no surfers when we past by. I did see a couple of those new boards that you stand up on and paddle.

One last thing on the Gorge and the Columbia River. They have built these huge dams for Hydroelectric Power. Some of them have these huge locks to let boats and barges travel up and down stream.  A lot of grain and wood pulp gets moved up and down this river.  When I get a boat I'm going up through those locks someday.

After a couple of stops at some small towns in the Gorge and a town called Pasco, we started to nod off and sleep on the way to Spokane Wa.  The Empire Builder has two parts to it and at Spokane, depending on which way it is going it is split apart or connected together. One part is for the Portland Area and the other is for the Seattle Area.  It is weird when they do the switch over. You have been sitting on this train for hours with all the track noise and the air conditioning making noise and they shut it all down and there is like this dead silence and only some small lights. This is where the Dinning car is attached because it stays with the Seattle train. The first time I rode the train I wanted breakfast before we arrived in Portland, but when I got to the Observation car I notice the the Locomotive out the door, luckily there is a snack bar in the lower part of the Observation car.

Advice for if you ride on the train, keep your hands on the seat backs or the luggage rack as you walk down the isles.  That train rocks from time to time and can throw you around some. More on that later.

One of the stops is at a place in Idaho called Sandpoint.  I have never seen it in the daylight. Some sort of Resort town, big lake there that I have seen on Google Earth. They serve Adult Beverages in the observation car so I went down to grab a couple of beers. Some people were already down there for fourth or fifths. I didn't find any thing for the cute girlfriend, although later we did get her a small wine and a sprite to make a wine cooler. We got a little sleep between Pasco and Spokane and after putting the two trains together got some more sleep between Spokane and Sandpoint.

It was somewhere before Sandpoint that there was this crash next to us that woke us up. We turn to see these legs up in the air. The nice Lady Conductor was asking if the person that had just fallen onto her and was now laying at her feet, if she were ok. This lady had come to the back of the car looking for the bathroom, boy was she hammered, The train lurched as it does from time to time and there she went ass over tea kettle, as my mom use to say, right into the conductor's lap and then to the floor at the conductors feet.

The conductor was asking her again if she was ok and if she was looking for the restroom. The train car is a two story deal. You enter from the middle of the car on the first floor, where the restrooms are along with some luggage racks, then go up these tight three turn stair cases to the sitting area. The stairs can disorient you even if you are sober. The drunk lady is now on her feet and now at the very back of the car behind us touching the panels that contain some train related storage and air handling machinery and the trash. I think that in her inebriated state she was thinking this train was like an airplane and the restrooms are at the back.

The conductor and I finally convinced the lady that the restrooms were downstairs. Good lord this lady was almost blind drunk. She headed off back towards the middle of the car where the stairs are, pausing and looking in over other passengers spots looking for the stairs. She passed the stairs for a second and noticed them and started down. I was figuring the train would lurch again and she would end up as a pile at the bottom. I guess she figured it out because we didn't see her again.

 Between Sandpoint and Libby you pass over the Idaho Montana border from that point on you will be spending the rest of your day in Montana. You are heading into the Rockies at this point. Somewhere between Libby MT and a town called White Fish MT there is a tunnel.  I saw this also on Google Earth. The train tracks go into this mountain and come back out miles away on the other side. I was awake about 4:30 ish and it was starting to get light out I was starting to make out the river we were traveling next to. I must have woke up the cute girlfriend with all my looking around, she is such a light sleeper, and I told her that I thought we we coming up on this really long tunnel. I looked it up again here as I was writing this because I couldn't remember the name. It is called the Flathead Tunnel, it is in the Flathead Mountains after all.

I was looking this tunnel up online here and in the search there was a Youtube video for this tunnel. It was posted by this guy who hops trains. Boring as hell him just rambling on about how he caught the train.  I had no Idea that there was still hobos around. I thought jumping trains was very illegal, but this knucklehead is posting his exploits online....sheesh. It boring but I will link it here as proof there are still hobos.

So we enter the tunnel and I start counting in my head. I'm at around 75 when the cute girlfriend has to use the restroom. She gets up and I sit there counting in my head she goes downstairs and is down there a few minutes. I made it to about maybe 280 before my ADHD kicked in and was distracted by this light in the tunnel that went by. There was some sort of marker light about every half mile or so. Cute girlfriend comes back from the restroom and we are still in this tunnel. This thing is just short of 7 miles long and is the second longest railroad tunnel in the US.  I guess the longest tunnel is the Cascade Tunnel on the line heading to Seattle. Interesting read on how they pump air into the tunnels on that link.  My ears kept popping as we went through the Flathead tunnel, I thought it was the suction of the train passing through the tunnel but this air pump method they have makes more sense now that I have read about it on that Cascade Tunnel Wiki page.

We arrived in White Fish MT around 8am or so, I talked cute girlfriend into some breakfast in the Dining Car. She is not much of a breakfast person and the seat had not treated her well that night so she was not the happiest camper. The dining car is way forward of the train. You sit communal style. You walk in they put you at a table with another passenger and you eat with them. The guy across from us was not a very talkative person. We order the Omelet and juice and coffee. It is very expensive to eat in the dining car, but I recommend at least one meal there just for the experience. Just like Danny Kay and Bing Crosby sitting in the dining car in the move "White Christmas"...oh great now I have that "Snow" song in my head.

We were in there for a few minutes and had already been seated when and ordered when we first met the Hostess of the Dining Car. We were sitting at the entrance to the car and got to see her in action. The way she talked to people and dealt with them was just a little gruff.  I would describe her as probably a detail oriented person and could coordinate the seating to the car with great skill. Alas like most detail oriented people she was not a people oriented person....lol  We called her "Sunshine" for the rest of the trip. She would announce who's tables were ready, and when the car would close down for the change of meal times and breaks, and she came through the cars getting dinner reservations. She seamed to have been doing this job for a long time and was just jaded by it.

So we get our meals and the train starts to roll. We are sitting with our backs towards the forward motion of the train which is unnerving at first. We only roll forward a hundred yards or so and the train reverses. it comes to a stop and then the power is cut. I guess they have to do this when they hook or disconnect cars.
I looked over at one of the conductors that was sitting at the table across from us taking his break and ask him if we are having mechanical issues or something.

He says they are hooking up a Private Coach to the train.  In this day and age you just don't think that there are still private train cars. He tells us a story about a family that rented this private coach and started out in LA and took it up to the coast and then to places like Yellowstone and such and ended up in Florida near Disney World or something. He said it was over a million dollars for this excursion. I got on my phone and looked it up on Google and saw that there were quite a few private train coaches around for hire.

Later on when we made our first stop in North Dakota I got off the train to get some pictures of the private coach.

It is one of the old Dome Cars from the late 50's.

I told the guy at the back of the train to smile. I didn't have much time but I talked to the guy briefly. He and the lady are part of the wait staff for this car. One of them I guess is the chef. To my friend Chef Greg...this maybe your calling...grin.  The name on the side of the car is Sierra Hotel, it really brought back some memories of my youth when we rode the train.  I remember riding up in the dome going through Oregon one time. Check out the Sierra Hotel website, how cool would it be to rent one of these!

Well the train started rolling again and we finished our meal and headed back to our seats. As you walk around the cars you see a wide range of personal entertainment. Most people have their laptops out and a movie or game playing on it.

Behind our seats was this kind of dead space area that you could fit in. Which came in handy when we went through my favorite part of the Empire Builder Route.  Glacier National Park. The tracks follow the Flathead River up in to the park and up and over Marias Pass and beyond out onto the the mid-west prairies. I took some video of the Flathead river.  It had this cool green color to it, tinted train window didn't do any of my pictures any justice.

Glacier National Park has been around since 1910, and the trains have been and integral part of the park, but one of the more famous forms of transportation is the Red Autobuses better known as "Red Jammers''

You may have seen one of these beauties in the Rose Parade. I found this Photo on Flickr.com. Nice Craftsman Lodge behind the Red Jammer. I saw one going up the Highway that parallels the tracks but my camera would have never got the shot...sigh.  I guess they call them Jammers because you had to grind the gears trying to clime the hills back in the old days.  The Vistas are wonderful.

I would love to spend a few days seeing the sites here sometime.  As we passed the Summit for the rail line there was an obelisk standing tall next to Hwy 2, the road next to the tracks. This is the Continental Divide and a monument to a couple of people. The place is Called Marias Pass.

The Obelisk is a Monument to Theodore Roosevelt. I like the story how the land was donated for the monument, follow the link. There is also a statue of a gentleman named John Frank Stevens, the principal engineer for the Great Northern Railway that charted the route through Marias Pass. After this we stopped at east Glacier where I got a crappy shot of the Lodge there.

From hear on out it is nothing but Prairie, a rolling land of grass, wheat, and cattle, oh and of late....OIL WELLS!
There is another Obelisk not too much further down the tracks.

This one has to do with these guys.





Camp Disappointment, during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Capt. Lewis tried to find out if the Missouri Watershed went up to the 50th Parallel to try and get more land for the United States, but at this point found out it didn't hence the Disappointment. I saw this marker when I was heading west on the train back in March and Googled it on the train. I saw it and had thought Wounded Knee, but was reminded that the Knee is in South Dakota.

When I moved up to North Dakota to work I started seeing these signs every where. The Missouri River is just south of Minot and all the Highways paralleling the Missouri seem to have these signs on them. Funny thing is when the Cute Girlfriend and I move lock stock and barrel up here to Washington State I was barraged by more signs. South of Minot there is a man made lake called Sakakawea and here in Longview Wa there is a lake Sacagewea. It is amazing how much land those guys and gals surveyed. Plus the myth and legend that there travels have become.

At one point during our train ride I had to use the restroom and was going down the stairs to the lower section of the car. The stairs are very steep and have blind corners. Well I miss judged one of my steps going for the second landing down and ended up jumping two steps and landed on my feet with a thud. Just starting up the stairs is this poor Mennonite gentleman, startled him and he jumped back thinking I was going to hit him or something....lol.  Poor guy.  The Mennonites are related to the Amish, so if you have seen the movie Witness with Harrison Ford, a guy dressed like that was who I startled. He said he was in no hurry and I apologized that I had startled him. He and his wife were the only Mennonites in our car, and some others were in a car forward of us. The man came back to the conductor next to us to plead his case for moving up to the next car to be with his brothers and sisters. It is very interesting to see them and watch them interact.

We stopped at Havre MT where I ran to a couple of places to find some tums for the cute girlfriend. She was afraid I was going to miss the train. Found the tums in the train station even though I ran down to the main street of town to what I thought was a mini-mart. I had a couple of minutes left so I grabbed a shot of this steam locomotive that was displayed at the station.

I love this guy in the pic, he looked right at me as I was taking the picture and walked right into it...he is an oblivion...one who is oblivious of what else is going on around them...so Mr Oblivion my revenge is to post your butt on my blog and call you a Knucklehead!...grin

This was the placard on the train...I love info like this.

The test of the trip was pretty boring, look out the window, play Sudoku. When we hit North Dakota I called my friend to tell him the train was very late.  He told me he would leave his car at the train station and where he had hid the keys.

As we got closer to our destination I started pointing stuff out to the cute girlfriend, town names, any cool old houses, and since the train passes my favorite church in ND she got to see that go by. We finally get to Minot and get our butts off the train.  I go looking for my friends car.  Cute girlfriend is thinking my friend brought our Lincoln to the station. I find my friends car and it is backed up against the loading platform for the train and there are knuckleheads leaning against it.  I needed to walk up nonchalantly and retrieve the keys from there hiding place. Cute girlfriend is perplexed about this point and has no idea as to what I was up to.

This Conductor from the train spots me with my luggage and comes over and askes me what my destination is.  At this point I grab the keys from their hiding place and tell the conductor "Minot"...he looks at the list in his hands and I'm sure he has already crossed off Minot. He says "oh my we have a problem here".

I start unlocking the car, now cute girlfriend is totally lost, why am I getting in this little white Aveo and not finding the Lincoln. The conductor is still not getting it and neither is the cute girlfriend.  I had to tell the conductor that I was home and this was Minot and that I just got off the train....lol  Poor guy he got it then and moved on.  Then I get this "Kris what are you doing?" I tell her to get her luggage in that this is my friends car...."OHHH!"

We drag our luggage into the house and there are 3 cute kids waiting for us. One of them was very happy to see me. Her nick name is PenGwen, she is so cute.  I had missed her very much and was good to hug her and tell her hello, Her older sister Desi had grown since I last saw her. Then there is the world famous Colin.
I sure do miss those kids, they made my homesickness a lot easier. More on our Road Trip home on another post. Here Colin is stealing the show.

 

 

North Dakota Living rebuilding the American Four Square

The American Foursquare home is a staple in the American Mid-West. Realistically easy to build. It was good for large families.  It fit well on a small city lot. It's popularity was helped by the fact that Sears and Roebuck Modern Home Catalog sold, "build yourself" kit home of this type of house.
Sears Model 52
Sears Hamilton
Sears Chelsea

Click on the link and check out the prices.
Another Kit home company called Aladdin Homes had some models


This one is very much like the one I lived in while in North Dakota.  These houses are so prevalent in the mid west they are called "Prairie Boxes".
Homes built in the early 1900's were more of a personal thing. The owner had his or her hands in most of the design and building of it. The designs and look  could be anything from Victorian to Craftsman or a little of both.  Brick, Shingle, Clapboard, or Stucco where used on these simple homes. Depending on the region the looks would vary too.  The Foursquares I have seen up here in the Pacific Northwest since I moved up here have a different look.
Like this one...if you notice how the upstairs front widows are out a little from the house. Image from Seattledreamhomes.com.

The Famous Architect Frank Lloyd Wright even put his mark on the Foursquare.


This is a good example of Wrights Prairie School influence. Image from artsandcraftshomes.com.

Our house in North Dakota had some of these influences too.  She was built in 1913, making her 100 years old this year. Now for my story.

In August of 2011 my friend Kevin convince me to come up to North Dakota to work. He was staying in his 36 foot Fifth Wheel in a makeshift trailer park at this RV store. The first night up there I had to sleep in his bed with him in it too. We agreed there would be no spooning! His son-in-law was sleeping on the floor in the living room of the trailer.  The son-in-law was going to stay at his sisters house until his wife came up and we could all find a house.  We needed to find a place before October because the Trailer park shut down for the winter.

Kevin's wife was back in the trailer a couple of days later. I have known Kevin and his wife since High School. I was even Best man at their wedding. Back in High School Kev's wife and I actually went to Prom together, so we all know each other very well.

So we set up to living and working in lovely North Dakota. From that point on I considered them my Minot Family.  The first week I was there I was training and getting physicals and all so I had not much work to do. Kev's daughter was there a few days after I arrived . She had brought her 3 children with her.  We all set out to find a house to live in.There were several problems though.

The houses that were available for sale were over the top expensive, and all the rentals were taken up by the oil workers.  They put a few offers in on a couple of homes on the market but none were taken. On top of that the City of Minot had just gone through the worst flood in it's existence.

 I saw the aftermath of the flood, it was the most heartbreaking thing I had seen in a long while.  It was the "Perfect Storm". The Fall of 2010 was very wet, winter 2010/2011 was more snow than they had  seen in 60 years. The ground was saturated and could absorb no more water. Canada started releasing waters from it'd dams up stream in the winter they had so much water. The spring melt was much more than the Canadian water system and the Army Corps or Engineers water system could handle. Then it started to rain. By May evacuations of people down by the river was in full effect. They started building dikes to contain what they new was going to be a flood of unseen proportions. The company we worked for sent my friend Kev down with a huge excavator to help build the dikes.  He said it was amazing to watch that much water going by him as shoveled dirt. The flood was something like 10 feet over the last record. Normally if it floods in Minot, the river spills over the berm, floods some basements and leaves some mud in the streets. This flood was almost to the roof line of the single story homes.

This flood displaced hundreds of families in many of the towns along the river. FEMA brought in tons of trailer and built whole trailer parks for the displaced. Some people still live in those trailers today. The waters receded and some people started emptying out the debris that was once there love and joy of a home. Many were upside down on their home as it was because of the economy and they gave the flooded hulks back to the bank. Some of the resilient started posting yellow signs with "We'll Be Back" on them and started work on their homes to get them back to normal. The Nice people my friend bought the house from couldn't see how they could go back to the once lovely home that they had fixed up over the years. Raised a family in, put their love, and time into.  You could see it in their eyes when they showed it to us, the sadness of loss, how hard it was to be in the ruin of their old dream.

I mentioned this before in an earlier blog. We had been looking at houses and place to possibly put the trailer so we could live. The only things that were even in the ball park was a flood home. we rolled down into these areas at dusk a few times and it was eerie to see. Dingy covered in mud, no electricity so there was no sign of life, no animal life around, horrible. We had toured a few homes down in the flood zone.  We were looking at this small home on a corner lot, the house was probably not worth saving, but we could put the trailers on it and hope to stay there for a year maybe two.  Across the street was this American Foursquare with a for sale by owner in the yard. I told my friends that is the house we should get. But the price was too much to get a loan on, especially on a flood damaged home.

Every time we passed by that house I told them that was the house we needed. It was a classic home and would have great resale value if fixed up right. As it got down to the wire at the trailer park some providence came our way. Kev's daughter, my god daughter, had talked to the owner of this Foursquare and he liked her and the fact that her husband was in the military. He agreed to let them make payments to him and not have to go through a bank. It was actually advantageous for both parties on this.  He could sell an almost unsellable house to people he could trust, and we had a place to live.

I get this message from my friends wife or maybe it was the god daughter, I can't remember which, stating that they got "My" house.  It was a teasing "I hope your happy now" message. The owner got the Electricity back on and gas so we could heat and do the final drying out of the house. He had the place treated earlier for mold and we wedged two large Fifth Wheel trailers in the back yard. I mean wedge there was maybe an inch and a half on either side to put these two units in there.

It is a two story home so the upstairs was untouched by the flood.  I temp wired the upstairs into the new breaker box and moved a bed and a heater into one of the rooms of the old house.  I spent the first night in my own room in ND, and reported the next morning that the nice old house was not haunted.  I had to keep all this living in the house on the low key.  The city had not declared it liveable yet.

Here is our lovely Foursquare.

I'm not sure what supported this old lady but, it was scary to look at what held things up. For instance the center of the house on the main floor was held up by a simple 2X4 wall. If you will look at the chimney, although it is a nicely done tapered to the top chimney it was an after thought to this house and someone had just cut a hole in the wall, right through the wall studs and put it in. That is one of the first thing we supported on this house.

 We had to wedge that beam into the studs to get it to work.  They bought a bunch of house jacks and we set to making things level, or rather as level as you can make a 100 year old house that has settled and sagged. During this time we would jack up the center of the house a fraction of an inch in the basement to bring the center of the house up some. We sistered one of the beams in the basement to help support the house better.  We also put up this bubble wrap silver insulation to help hold in the heat for the winter.  Pretty neat stuff, it did a great job and kept the house warm.

Next we supported a wall in the kitchen area. A lot of weight was just hanging over the kitchen windows simple 2X4 frame.

This was the last beam we needed on the outside, it was now time to work more on the middle. Here is some stuff we were up against.

Take a close look at this 2X4. It was actually 2 scraps cut to fit together. This was on the end of the center supporting wall...luckily there is now weight on this so it has lasted for 100 years.

 You can almost see the sag of the floor above the beam.  If you look close enough you can see the difference in lengths of the little supports above the beam.  To the left is one of the house jacks holding up and lifting part of the center of the house. The Plaster upstairs started to crack as we started this process. The top of the stairs felt a lot more solid when we were done lifting.

On the ceiling  of the picture above you can see the start of the plate for the new 2X6 center wall to replace the old one shown.

 Above we are supporting the old wall. the old lath and plaster use to help do this but with that gone the house was a little shaky.  It took us a while to get through with this part. We did have help though from the World Famous Collin.

That little monkey was just starting to walk and he saw us and his dad climbing those ladders and using the tools and he would want to help, and also climb to the top. On the floor next to him is the new beam about to go up.  Collin would grab a screw driver and put it on something and make like he was fixing it, cute as hell.
New beam goes up and is supported.

After getting that center wall built we started to rewire the down stairs and put things to code. We also replace some windows and installed new ones where none were before.  Then re-plumbing the main floor.  We used this stuff called Pex. It is a modular plastic hose and clamp and fitting type of set-up.  The stuff is very good in cold climates and doesn't burst when it freezes.  Then came the drywall. My friends wife is an artist with drywall texture. When she was done the walls looked just like plaster walls. Then came the day to put in a sink and stove in the kitchen.

This was actually a mile stone. Up to this point all the cooking was being done outside in one of the trailers, and we were eating like campers for almost a year.  We all sat down to a home cooked meal at a dinner table we could all sit at.

Just before the winter of 2012 everybody moved into the house and a room was built in the basement for "Uncle Fester", Me, so everyone would have a room.  The one shower made for an interesting time with all those people in the house.

During the first winter there I had bought one of those fake electric fireplaces on sale.  It had a heater in it and would warm a room on the cold nights. I set up my room with a micro fridge and found a floor model flat screen TV for cheap. I was set even in the basement.

I have been told that a lot has been done in my absence so be surprised when I head up there in a couple of weeks.  I think this house was the best thing for all of us up there.  The people that buy this house next will be getting a much better house than when it was built 100 years ago.  I'm going to miss all the debates on engineering and processes and styles, we had while working on this house. She sure is a beautiful old lady.