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

Small Town North Dakota, the Ghost Towns

I have posted on this blog many times about adventures in Ghost Towns. We love Bodie Ca and want to return there every once in a while. While in North Dakota I almost never had time to do any exploring or ghost towning. I worked 6 Days a week and was only at home to sleep. The one day off we had was usually laundry and rest day.  Although we did have a large American Four Square to fix up that took up a lot of spare time. I will blog about that soon.

As it happened I drove through several old towns and ghost towns as part of my driving around and took pictures when I could. Many of the small towns revolve around agriculture, so there is a grain elevator that is the center of town. From high points you can see where all the grain elevators are and with that the towns.

Most of the small old towns in North Dakota might best be called Semi-Ghost Towns. Maybe just one family living in an old house in a run down dirt road settlement with all the buildings around them about to fall down. There was a push by some of these towns and the county that they were in to give away land to people that would move there and stay.  Those didn't turn out so well.

Along comes the new Oil Boom. Tons of oil workers looking for places to stay or park their RV start moving into these old towns and with in a matter of days some small town has now doubled it's population.  Hopefully this current boom will last a few decades and not peter out and make these towns die out completely.

The first I heard of the Bakken Oil Boom was from my friend Kevin calling me and texting me that I need to get my ever widening butt up there because there is tons of money to be had.  Before I went on my cross country truck driving thing, Kevin had called me and told me how they couldn't find a real place to park their RV and had it in a make shift trailer park that would close before the first freeze.

I opened Google Earth and started poking around and looking up all these little towns and clicking on the posted pictures It was amazing to see these old towns in the picture.  You could see they were just a shadow of what they once were.  I saw little towns that were next to rail road tracks  Like, Epping, Wheelock, Temple, White Earth, Ross, Palermo ND.  Towns out in the middle of nowhere like McGregor, Wild Rose, Battle Field, Larson, and my favorite name Flickertail.  Actually Flickertail is one of the States Nicknames, but in Stanley ND is a small town Museum named Flickertail.  I guess flicker tail is the name for those abundant ground squirrels that are all over North Dakota.

Kevin told me that all these towns were full up or uninhabitable, and the day I rolled into North Dakota it was evident by all the RV's lined up in the first town I rolled up on as I left Montana.

In my searches I kind of locked in on this town called Temple ND.  On Google Earth there are little blue squares that show pictures that have been linked to an area you are looking at.  I clicked on one of those and up popped an old church. It was several months after arriving that my driving path finally lead me through Temple ND.

The Church was there and what was left of some old homes.  The Church was almost an obsession with me.  I took pictures of it every time I went by it.  I stopped and took naps and ate lunch behind that church.
I think it is the tower that I like best.

I would sit and eat my lunch and look at the blown out window and open front door and it's dangerously sagging floor, and wonder how many weddings happened there, funerals, Baptism.  I could see people walking out its doors and heading for buggies and old model T's after a service.  If there was a chance I would be near Temple I would intentionally drive by to see if I could take a better picture of it.

 I could see the old rusting boiler down in the basement, all the planks popping off, windows missing and saw something that need to be imaged.

I took pictures from all sides.

It was always fun to stop.

I regret never getting a sunrise or sunset picture with my church.

When I found the Sepia setting on my phone I ran out to my Temple Church and snapped a picture.

A guy in Oil Field Garb down in the grass to get a pic like this must have been a funny site.

I was getting more artsy as I took more of these pictures.

The Tower always reminds me of a Rook from a chess set.

I wonder what kind of clock was in the tower, I'm assuming that is what was in the round hole....lol
I will probably stop by one more time when I travel back up to North Dakota to get a car and some things I left up there.  The Cute Girlfriend and I are taking the train out to Minot and driving back.

Temple ND wasn't just this church. It was a small community next to the Burlington Northern Tracks.  According to Wikipedia, the definitive source for all suspect information, says that Temple was originally called  Haarstad, after the original land owner and post master.

That reminds me of another town up there, actually two, that were named after the town postmaster. Up near the Canadian border is a couple of towns, Columbus, which is still alive and kicking, and the Town of Larson, which is all but a ghost town now, sorry no pictures. I read that these two towns that are about three miles apart are named after the same guy, postmaster for both towns. Columbus Larson, I read it on the internet so it has to be true!...lol

Back to Temple North Dakota I found a picture of the towns old school house on a ghosttown.com forum credit for the picture is to the poster Edsel. Great pic.

When I first drove through this town this school house was not there. I read it had been moved somewhere and the rumor was that it was converted into a house. The steeple is still laying behind the foundation.  Nice school I probably would have taken lots of pics of this one too....lol

There is the top of the school house.

Whats left of one of the houses of Temple. I took a picture of the Temple Cemetery but I can not find it sadly. Temple is like so many towns in that part of the country. A forgotten dot on a map.  I can see how the rising cost of farming finally ate these towns and small farms became large farms. Children move off the farm and don't continue with the family farming and it just goes to seed.  Change is all there is in the universe I better get use to it. Nostalgia is nice but you can't let it get you down that places like this wither away. I just memorialized it a while longer here on the internet...lol  Change will make the internet obsolete soon enough.

Small North Dakota towns

I drove a truck while up in North Dakota.  I drove all over the Northwest corner of the state. On my first day driving around I saw an old school house and I wanted to take a picture of it. I saw something inside the door of this school house and was surprised when I stopped the next day to take a picture what it was in the door.

It was sad to look at but,

I could see a teacher sitting at this old piano singing to the kids. When I took this picture it reminded me of the last time I saw an old torn up piano...except this one played. My Piano Story.
I was unsure how far I could enter the school house this being my second day driving around, but for a while I would look at this place as I passed it and wonder what it was like back when this place was built.

I later discovered that Schools like this one were part of what in North Dakota is called a township. A 5 or 6 square mile area that served the farms and any communities that sprang up in that township. In these townships was also a church, most likely a Lutheran Church, and sometimes they sat side by side.

I started taking pictures of any cool looking school or church, and finally any abandoned farms with cool houses or barns.

Several months later just before my first winter there in North Dakota I was much more brave and I took a look inside this school house. Oh how all the ACLU, Atheist, god haters would go apoplectic  if they saw this stuff on the walls of a school today.

 Gasp! they taught about G-O-D in this school!

Atheist reading this blog are now looking at Google Earth to find this place and burn it down....lol

I really got into taking these picture. When I got my smart phone I found out it took great pics and had a Black and White effect and a Sepia effect. It was fun to discover new roads and see all these hundred year old buildings.

Some of the schools where just one room  places, but there was a few two room schools around. One side of the school was usually a blank wall and the other all windows.

I bet when it is -30 outside any sun coming in those windows is a good thing.  I found a few of my favorite houses up there.

This fine Craftsman farm house was moved not long after this picture, this house was moved and fix up on someone's new farm.

This house was one of my favorites, it had an awesome view of a low valley and the prairie. I could see fixing this one and putting a nice drive that goes around the house and garage/barn down the hill behind the house.

I'm kind of a nostalgic guy and feel bad that these old homes, and churches, and schools are now decaying out here on the prairie.  It shows what once was, out here in this desolate land, people scratching an existence out of the soil.  Raising and schooling their families.  Simple church going folks that found happiness even out here on this rolling prairie. Little did they know that there was billions of dollars, five miles under their feet.

I got kind of artsy with some of my pictures.

I loved it when these places were more intact. Bell Tower and all.

This Church is my favorite. I have taken pictures almost every time I passed this beauty. I will Blog about this church and it's little community later.

Here is the first school I took a picture of, in black and white.

 The Black and White gives it a different feel. I'm sorry I never took a picture of this one in the Sepia. I wish I was a better photographer. The settings on my phone let me adjust the light settings, but I never think of those things when I take a picture.

The country was full of treasures if you kept your eyes open.

This barn is almost 100 years old. This one is very well kept and still in use.
There are plenty of abandoned farm out here.

This old farm house is a few miles south of the barn above.  This must have been a productive farm at one time.  Large house, large shelter belt, but now decay.  There are not many trees out there on the prairie, you have to plant them if you want them, all the farms have layers of trees and shrubs to block out the hard winds and cold that come from the north, but unattended these shelter belts eventually die off.

I love any school that still has the belfry attached, and the bell still there. That is what caught my eye on this little school house.

This next one sat next to a Canola field.

The Canola was so yellow that it changed the green in the foreground some.
I will have to do a short post on the crops I saw growing up there.

Holy Mackerel there is a whole gang of Lutherans up in North Dakota. After the turn of the last Century Scandinavians and Germans Immigrated to this part of the country and set up to growing wheat

This Cemetery and Church was started in 1905 as the Iron sign says. Between 1900 and around 1915 ish people where coming to this part of the country to have new lives in this country.  Sad if you walk through some of these cemeteries, you see all these family names and the short life spans, and then there is the small marker in the family plot that just say "Baby Olson".  A baby that didn't make it in this hash land, very sad.
This church is still in use today and well kept.

They have plexiglass over the windows now to keep some heat in and probably to keep drunken country hoods from breaking the stained glass windows.  I was told that the Iron Sign work is a German thing, although most of the names are are Scandinavian in these places.  I started taking pictures in Sepia and this church turned out pretty good.

I took this next photo up at a little border town called Northgate ND.

  We were only 50 miles from the Canadian Border and one day my kids and I drove up there and found this church.  I liked the front entrance to this one. It was nice of my kids to drive up to see me, I'll post about their visit up there.

This Church is in a little town called White Earth ND.  This church was probably very nice when those pine trees were smaller.  Behind them is a large stained glass window.  I think it was minus 20 when I took this picture.

This church is just south of a town called Columbus. I took another picture of this church straight at the front doors.

Just after I took this picture a huge badger ran out from the twin pine trees to the left of the church. Me and my large clunky work boots were not fast enough to run and get a picture of him.  I'm glad nobody got any Youtube video of me running to try and get the picture of the varmint, I probably looked very funny.

Another well kept and still in use church north of the town of Tioga ND. I will end this with an old school I found.

It was dusk when I took this picture. This school in Ryder ND is still in use today and has had a Gym built on to it. This was a nice little town, with a nice center town park and lots of nicely kept old houses.
The poor towns that have died and some that are still doing a slow death are still are a sad reminder that this area is still very rural and hard to reach area.  If you keep a minds eye open though you can kind of see the way it use to be. There is a part two about North Dakota's small old towns. I'm going to work on that next.