Summer 2017, Day 9: Fort Mandan, Knife River Indian Villages NHS, Dakota Gasification, Teddy Roosevelt NP

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Ben

We awoke to a beautiful morning at Chain of Lakes Recreation Area:

I love RV breakfasts:

As we prepared to leave, we stowed the leveling blocks we had parked on and found this fellow living inside:

It’s a Tiger Salamader:

So long:

We drove west, the phrase “God’s country” coming to mind:

Our first stop of the day was the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Washburn, North Dakota:

The museum was very well done:

This air rifle is the same type used by the Corps of Discovery to impress Indian tribes they encountered:

This journal clasp was removed from one of Lewis or Clark’s journals from their expedition, which lasted from 1804 to 1806:

M tried on a buffalo robe:

Thirty years after Lewis and Clark’s expedition, Prince Maximilian of Wied led an ethnographic expedition to chronicle the then-rapidly-disappearing Native American culture:

It’s cold out there on the prairie:

We visited nearby Fort Mandan, where Lewis and Clark wintered in 1804-1805 before continuing west. The original fort’s site was submerged with one of the Missouri River’s frequent shifts in channel. This recreated fort is near the original site:

We continued west to Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, where Lewis and Clark dropped off Sacagawea on their way back from the Pacific Coast:

A recreated Hidatsa earth lodge:

The visitor center included this Bull boat

We continued west for a plant tour of the Great Plains Synfuels plant:

After viewing a video about the coal gasification process, which breaks down coal into simpler compounds which are then reconstituted into an array of useful fuels and products, we viewed the 1:32 scale model of the plant that was used to build the actual plant. The model covers 1200 square feet and was built by eight engineers over two years at a cost of eight million dollars:

Note the plant employee in the control room:

The tour was fascinating! Outside, the actual plant:

We continued west to visit the northern unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which preserves a portion of North Dakota’s badlands in an area which shaped the pro-conservation attitudes of then-rancher Teddy Roosevelt. The visitor center was closed, so we left the RV in the parking lot and drove the scenic drive out into the badlands:

Longhorn cattle were reintroduced here to recreate the landscape as Teddy Roosevelt experienced it when he owned a ranch in this area:

Great views from the overlooks:

I love the wide-open vistas of the American West:

Bison in the distance:

This area of the park has the largest concretions we’ve ever seen, much larger than the Moki Marbles we saw in Utah:

Huge concretions!

We left the park, briefly driving south:

A few minutes later, we arrived at the Forest Service’s Summit Campground, which now operates as a dispersed camping location:

This campground is not very well known:

Falafel for dinner:

Good night from west-central North Dakota! See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.

Summer 2017, Day 8: Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile SHS

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Ben

We’re back to our RVing tradition of great breakfasts:

We packed up to head out. B made a poster for her cousin:

Ready to go:

Saying goodbye to my parents:

We drove north and west into North Dakota. It’s the first time the four of us have visited the state, our 48th state. Only Kentucky remains:

We got off the freeway and passed through fields of sunflowers:

We arrived at Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site:

The Minuteman Missile is a nuclear ICBM still in use by the US Air Force. The facilities in this area were dismantled as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in the early 90s. Each missile alert facility controlled ten launch facilities dispersed throughout the countryside. The only facilities remaining are the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility and the nearby November-33 Launch Facility. The map below shows the location of the two remaining facilities in green:

The launch facility is little more than an underground missile silo surrounded by a chain link fence. The Missile Alert Facility which we visited is composed of an above-ground support building and an underground facility composed of a machine room and a control room in which two Air Force officers were always ready to direct their ten silos to launch:

Our tour began in the above-ground structure, which provided housing for the facility’s manager, cook, and security team:

This is the guard room, from which the main gate was watched. The red doughnut is made of concrete with a coffee can in the center. When visitors checked in their firearms, they would be unloaded and test fired into the can to insure the weapon did not have a round chambered:

Modem and RS232 interface for the weather station. Ah, the good old days:

This escape ladder allows personnel to travel between the underground and above-ground facilities should the elevator fail:

Thankfully the elevator did work, and we took it 60 feet down to the underground complex, which is composed of a pair of spherical reinforced structures, each with a massive door. The machine room was to the right:

The missile control room was to the left:

We checked out the machine room first:

The equipment room floor is suspended from the walls by a suspension system designed to allow the equipment to survive the shock of a nearby nuclear attack:

When the facility was decommissioned, the departing personnel signed the wall:

We next toured the control room from where the missiles would be launched:

The key that launches the missiles:

From this chair, civilization could be destroyed with the turn of a key:

One of the two Air Force officers would sleep here while the other waited for the launch command:

We left the historic site and continued west and south. Late afternoon brought a magical light:

Tonight we’re overnighting at Chain of Lakes Recreation Area. After getting the RV set up for the night we discovered that we were in the day use area and that there are individual camping areas ringing the lakes here: