Boom or bust

New Town, North Dakota

Some thoughts on a day where I drove far further west in North Dakota than I originally intended to...

- North Dakota is going through what has been described as an oil boom. It's hard to comprehend the magnitude of this boom without witnessing it first hand. Highways in the middle of nowhere are chock full of semi-truck after semi-truck, all covered in red-brown dust. In fact, everything is covered in red-brown dust. There are oil and natural gas rigs all over the landscape being watched by men wearing hard hats that drive large pick-up trucks with license plates from all over the country. In New Town (aptly named after everyone was forced to move when Lake Sakakawea filled with water in the 1950's), the two-lane highways are so congested with traffic that a semi waiting to turn left at a temporary stop light can back traffic up from one side of the town to the other.

- Bugs. Bugs. And bugs. At times, it sounded as if I was driving through a steady rain. It was actually the thud of thousands of little flying insects slamming into the windshield. After a while, using windshield wiper fluid does little more than just smear them. You know it's bad when you can visually see black clouds of insects heading towards you on the highway.

- If you like wide open skies, then North Dakota will not disappoint. I did not make it far enough west to see  much of the badlands that cover the state, but the small bit I did see was quite great. I look forward to making it back again to see Theodore Roosevelt National Park someday.


Also visited: Bismarck, Harmon, Center, Stanton, Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, Hazen, Beulah, Zap, Golden Valley, Dodge, Halliday, Dunn Center, Killdeer, Mandaree, Keene, Crow Flies High Butte Historic Site, Parshall, Plaza and Ryder, North Dakota.

Sitting Bull and Sakakawea

Sakakawea Monument near Mobridge, South Dakota

The monuments for Sakakawea and Sitting Bull stand on a bluff overlooking the upper reaches of Lake Oahe and the town of Mobridge across the water. As I arrived, a storm hovered overhead and threatened rain, the swirling sky providing the perfect background for this place. This land was once the home of many tribes of Native Americans, including Sitting Bull's Lakota Sioux. Now it is fenced off with barbed wire that divides the land into large ranches and warns against trespassing.

I find the so-called reservations, in this case the home of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, to be among the most depressing places to visit in this country. No matter how majestic the land, no matter how proud the history of the people, the reservation reduces it to a sad narrative of how badly they were mistreated and how little can be done to resurrect this greatness. The poorest towns I have ever seen have been in reservations, towns full of junk cars and broken windows, towns that somehow seem temporary even after decades of existence.

It just makes me want to cry.


Also visited: Aberdeen, Richmond, Ipswich, Roscoe, Bowdle, Java, Selby, Glenham, Wakpala and Kenel, South Dakota. Fort Yates, Cannon Ball and Mandan, North Dakota.

Omaha to Aberdeen

Redfield, South Dakota

There's a short break before summer classes start up, so I've decided to hit the road for a few days. It wasn't until just yesterday that I finally made the decision to head towards North Dakota for the first time since stopping in Fargo back in 2008. I am looking forward to just wandering with very little specific planning into my travels. The goal is to see a bit of the Great Plains of both South and North Dakota, and to visit places that no one ever really thinks to go.

Day one was a direct (for me) drive to Aberdeen in north-central South Dakota. The weather was just as windy as it was a year ago. And the while the clouds were spectacular for most of the day, the sun chose to hide behind them nearly the entire time. Some days the light cooperates.. other days it does not.

The photograph above shows the remains of a small drive-in theater along U.S. Highway 281 just north of Redfield, South Dakota.


Also visited: Dell Rapids, Trent, Egan, Colman, Wentworth, Madison, Sinai, Arlington, Lake Preston, De Smet, Iroquois, Cavour, Huron, Wolsey, Bonilla, Hitchcock and Tulare, South Dakota.

The sasquatch no longer has any pizza

Butler County (Rising City) (2007)

Rising City (2013)

It is with sadness that I bid adieu to the subject of one of my favorite photographs from ninety-three, the infamous Sasquatch Pizza sign that adorned a convenience store along Nebraska Highway 92 in Rising City.

The first photograph was taken in July of 2007 as I passed through on my way home on one of the first few treks I made to discover Nebraska. At the ninety-three show at Hot Shops, this was the image that got the most comments and smiles. I must have told at least a dozen people where it was located.

Unfortunately, since I last passed through Rising City in 2010, the little store had a change of ownership and became "Fergy's Cafe" which has now gone out of business. Poor ol' Sasquatch Pizza was defaced horribly at some point and now is just barely visible. The edges of his face are still there under the ugly black spray paint, sort of haunting and sad, with that goofy smile somehow still there in spirit.

I'm reminded of the work of one of my favorite photographers, William Christenberry, and his ambition to photograph some of Alabama's vernacular architecture over the course of many decades. If his photographs are any indication, this building will still somehow have several more lives over the next twenty or thirty years.

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A word of advice from someone who should know better. If you buy a new (or used) camera, run it through its paces before you rely on it for anything that is time consuming or that will be difficult (or impossible) to shoot again.

I picked up a refurbished Nikon D600 as a backup body and this little trek I made Friday was my first time out with the camera. Unfortunately, it has a problem stopping down lenses and consistently overexposed images by a stop or two (or three) and left me with much less depth of field than I expected. So it goes back.

Live and learn, folks. Even expensive cameras can be lemons.

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Also visited on Friday: Hooper, Scribner, Snyder, Dodge, Olean, Howells, Clarkson, Leigh, Creston, St. Bernard, Cornlea, Humphrey, Platte Center, Columbus, Shelby, Garrison, David City, Brainard and Weston, Nebraska.