Monday, April 23, 2012

Celebrating Earth Day

To celebrate Earth Day in Dickinson ND I wanted to highlight two environmental disasters that are going on in our community

Stark County Commission OKs oil waste disposal site near Belfield

On Tuesday, the Stark County Commission approved a zoning change for 80 acres owned by Bryon Richard so Location Service Inc., of Oklahoma, can build a special waste landfill for up to 30,000 to 40,000 tons of drilling mud and cuttings every year.

Wind mostly culprit for small oil spill

SOUTH HEART — The power of the wind was bleakly demonstrated Wednesday when a small amount of oil escaped a well five miles northwest of South Heart and blew across five to 10 acres of agricultural land leaving an orange film of oil and fluids on grass and field cover.

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“I’m concerned with water quality and reclamation and any long term effects,” Obach said. “This eventually runs into the Heart River,” he said.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Medicine Hole, Killdeer ND

Hilary and I headed up to the Killdeer Mountains today. Both of us having an affinity for the mountains in New England (and not the ND town) were skeptical about these so called mountains. While they are a far cry from mountains they did challenge us with grade, wind, terrain and hail.

We hiked up the Medicine Hole trail and without a doubt this is in my top 4 favorite things I have done in North Dakota and should not be missed.

The views over the plains are impressive and expansive.

The Killdeer Mountain range is lovely in its lively greens and dramatic changes in grade.

The Medicine Hole itself is poorly marked, a strange and odd element, even a bit quirky with an interesting and mysterious history that has been relatively ignored in modern research.

The trail ends at a farm gate in a simple dreamy fashion.

The Logistics: Head north of Killdeer on Hwy 22 and you will begin to see signs, follow those north west till you turn down a ranch road. At the end of the road you will see a farm house to your right and a "parking area" straight/ left. Park there and head south over a cow grate, into a camping area. Past the camping area still heading south you will find yourself on the path. Its about 1 mile up to the top, not very well marked, but if you stay to the left most of the way you will be on the correct trail, if you pick the wrong trail its not hard to turn back, or do some intensive climbing forward, all paths lead to the top.

Slow, Subtle, Sweeping Color

Ian and I headed to the park again this weekend and did the eastern section of the Lower Paddock Creek

This is the final section of the Paddock Creek Trail for me and it was blissfully beautiful

Life is subtlety sweeping the badlands, frosty mint colored sage

Deep purples & lively tans

Deep greens & browns

Hints of mustard

warm air

Light budding greens

Fiery oranges with deep reds

and a few tumble weeds

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Canoe Tomoka State Park

Spent half a day in Tomoka State Park, and found the highlight of our Florida Vacation. This park has wonderful, friendly and informative park rangers (we even got to watch part of a er-enactment for school groups).

Along the hiking trail there is a lovely bench that was build as an Eagle Scout Project. We sat there for a while and had the privilege of seeing a dolphin swimming in the water way.

We rented a canoe and headed into Manatee water, where we saw an abundance of birds and found a Manatee, who was enchanted with our canoe. It came up to us and let Ian pet it for several moments before pushing our boat over to the shore, where it than settled in next to us for a nap! We went on our way and explored the reed marshes before turning around and heading back to the boat launch. The whole canoe trip was less than 3 hours and completed our vacation!

March is perhaps the perfect time to be in this park, not very many bugs, low levels of tourists, and just enough sun that your glad you have on sunscreen!

http://www.floridastateparks.org/tomoka/

surreal volunteering

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