Sugar Beet Harvest 017 - Bathgate ND

 Sunrise at our campsite in Hamilton, North Dakota

     We have worked the sugar beet harvest for 4 of the last 5 years. It takes place along the Red River valley along the border of MN and ND. We have worked at the Bathgate, ND piling station the past two years. It is located less than 10 miles from the Canadian border. We have 2 pilers that will each pile sugar beets 220' wide by 20' high and close to 2000' long. This year I was day shift foreman and Joyce worked in the scale house with Linda a local resident of the area who along with her husband Philip used to grow sugar beets themselves. Our pilers operate 24/7 during the harvest unless we are shut down for weather (too much rain or too warm usually).

Our shift is 8am to 8pm.

     This year we arrived in Grand Forks, ND to do our orientation, drug test, paperwork etc. at Express Employment's office first thing Monday morning of Sept. 16th. We stayed the night before at Grand Forks campground (former KOA), paid for by Emp. Express. They also pay for all our camping thru the end of the harvest. We stay at the fairgrounds in Hamilton which has 50amp electric and water at our sites. There is no sewer hook ups so they hire a honey wagon to pump us out twice a week. Our piling station is around 10 miles away. Hamilton has a piling station less than a mile away.

 Our 2 pilers at the end of the runway waiting for the season to start

Birdseye view as we start to pile beets - the pile will reach the each side almost to the green grass area and be 20' high

 Looking from the piler back towards the scale house where in a bit over 2 weeks we will pile beets as far as you can see down the concert runways

 A nice looking pile, straight top and extending to the grass

     While we wait for harvest to start, I spend a half day getting certified to run my Cat 926 front end loader at the American Crystal factory in Drayton, ND, attend a foreman's dinner meeting, move a piler to the start position, train ground workers, clean and organize my storage container and work a couple of days of Pre-pile. Joyce works one day cleaning the scale house and one day of pre-pile. We started full harvest on Sat. Sept. 30th and ran straight thru until Oct. 17th on day shift stopping only one day a few hours early due to heat. 

 Trans-systems hauls beets from the end of the pile to the factory sometimes while we are still piling. They only take the beets over the concrete until the ground freezes up

The piles continue to grow

 You can see we are getting closer to the scale house at this point

We will finish the season with the cab of the piler past the blue containers on the left side

 View from the piler operator's cab

 Just a few days before the end and the piles are almost out of runway. I had the move the porta-potti before much longer

Another beautiful North Dakota sunset on one of our last evenings piling beets

     All in all it was a good season for us. We headed for home on Wed. the 18th stopping at Sams Club in Grand Forks and camping at a nice Corp of Engineers campground about an hour west of Grand Rapids MN. They had shut the water off for the season but we had a nice electric site for free, good deal! The next day we made it to Van Riper State Park about an hour west of Marquette.

After a nice night we headed east and were home by noon. We should gross around $13 K for the month we were gone, very pleased with the harvest.

The Beauty of the Canadian Rockies!

Beautiful Mount Robson

     I am sorry it has been so long since my last post. You get busy and before long the blog is forgotten. 

    We wanted to spent a week or 2 in the Canadian Rockies on our way home from Alaska. We had been there back in 2001 when 9/11 terrorist attack took place. We remembered it being one of the most scenic places we had ever been. We decided to camp at Mount Robson Prov. Park one night before moving on down to Jasper and then Banff NP. In addition to enjoying the great views of Mount Robson we were able hike to some nice water falls as well.

Pretty lake in the north side of Jasper NP

    We arrived at Jasper NP late morning and after paying around $125 entry fees for 5 days (ouch) we found a nice campsite that backed up to a whitewater stream. We drove around to Maligne sp? Lake that afternoon and spotted a mountain sheep and even a few elk as well. During the evening back at camp we began to notice the odor of forest fires in the air and saw the visibility drop off for distant views. 

The stream behind our campsite

By afternoon these crisp clear views became hazy

    The next morning we moved to another campground. We still noticed smoke in the air. We decided to visit waterfalls that day hoping the views would be good and that there would be less smoke to breath.

 Notice how hazy it is back in the trees beyond the falls

      The next day we headed south to visit Banff NP. We actually thought the hazy skies had improved when we first started out. By mid morning we noticed the visibility getting bad again and it was hard to even see the mountains on the sides of the road as we drove along. 

 Saw these 2 at a visitor center

  We saw these falls not too long after we left our campground

Notice the skies started out fairly clear in the early morning

By mid morning you could see the smoke roll back in.

Mid day sun

     We drove to a visitor center in Banff around 1pm and checked on the weather forecast. The winds were to continue blowing from the southwest for at least 2 or 3 more days. The smoke was blowing up from forest fires that were burning throughout Washington state. We decided we were tired of breathing the smoke and with no relief in sight to cut our time in Banff short and head for home. It was so sad to not be able to enjoy the beauty of the area but we will save it for another time! Thus ends our wonderful summer trip to the great state of Alaska. Can't wait to return again someday.

Thank you for following along!

We Visit the Hyder / Stewart Area

This young Black Bear eating shrubs right on the edge of town

     We drove the side road to Stewart/Hyder hoping to see some bears that the area is known for. The road is about 35 to 40 miles long. The scenery along the road was amazing, with mountains all along the way. We also saw a few nice glaciers as well. The road takes you to the town of Stewart BC first. You then cross the border from Canada back into the USA at Hyder, AK. There are no US customs there due to  the road dead ending a few miles out of Hyder. When you return to Stewart though you must clear Canadian customs.

On one of our trips through customs we spent at least 15 minutes getting questioned...not really. The agent, station supervisor, actually spent time giving us advise on other places we might see bears on down the road as we head south. She had recently transferred to Stewart from Toronto. What a change of pace for sure. There wasn't anyone behind us in line so we had lots of time for an enjoyable chat.

The area is known for the bears that are quite commonly seen in the area. About 4 miles west of Hyder the US forest service has a huge fenced in boardwalk for viewing a stream that the salmon spawn up. We found a nice campsite at the city campground in Stewart. After setting up and eating lunch we headed for Fish Creek Rec site in the Tongass NF hoping to see bears.

 The boardwalk at Fish Creek

Salmon swimming in Fish Creek

 This pretty pond was on the opposite side of the boardwalk

The harbor at Stewart

     We spent 3 hours at Fish Creek and saw thousands of Salmon trying to swim upstream. Many were dead already having completed their journey. No bears sighted so we headed back to camp for supper. We returned again that evening and still no luck seeing a bear until we spotted a black bear on the side of the road about 50 feet up a cliff. 

The next morning we got up early and took showers, ate a quick breakfast and headed back out to Fish Creek. We got there just as it was getting light and found out we had missed Brown bear (Grizzly) that had been there 15 minutes earlier.

The rangers said to keep a watch as she might return. Sure enough in about 5 minutes we saw her coming down the stream looking for fish. I got 3 quick photos of her before she went out of view. A few minutes later we heard a crashing sound on the other side of the boardwalk and eventually she came out of the trees and wandered along the side of a small pond. We were able to view her and take pics for a couple of minutes...what a special treat.

 Our Grizzly at Fish Creek - taken about 7am

     We were very excited to saw the least. We were so happy we didn't get skunked. After waiting until 9 or so with no more sightings we decided to leave the area and head on towards Jasper and Banff NP. On the road out of Steward we saw 3 Black bears browsing along the roadside along with enjoying the beautiful views.

Heading to Hyder / Stewart via the Cassiar Hwy

     We continued to drive through the Yukon and headed towards the Stewart / Hyder area driving down the Cassiar Hwy in British Columbia. We enjoyed the scenery as autumn colors were showing off. We enjoyed the drive along the Cassiar very much and would do it again.

Fireweed plants showing off their fall color

Beautiful Kluane Lake in the Yukon

     

Our campsite on Kinaskan Lake

     We found a nice lakefront campsite at Kinsman Lake Prov. Park for the evening. After a short thunderstorm we were treated to a beautiful double rainbow!

Driving out of Denali NP

A pre-dawn Caribou checking us out

     We got up very early and headed out of the campground just as the morning light came about. We were hoping to see some early morning wildlife sightings as we drove back out of the park.  It was a nice morning with fairly clear skies and looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. We drove the first few miles slowly looking for wildlife and were wondering if we were going to have any luck with sightings. I pulled off after having seen what we thought was a caribou in the distance that quickly ran out of view. I then happened to look back over my shoulder and spotted this nice caribou in the above picture looking down on us. We enjoyed taking some pictures then moved on. After that we started see more wildlife quite often as we continued our drive out. We saw more Caribou before we ran into a nice cow moose grazing. After a while we came upon the area where we had backpacked with Toni (Pigeon) a month earlier. Toni had told us the area would be closed to hikers later in the summer due to the bull moose being in the rut. Sure enough the area had orange signs posted closing it. We soon found out why as we saw at least 4 bulls and a few cows as well. The fall colors are looking better every day.  

I wouldn't want to tangle with this big boy!

Two more nice bulls

Notice the nice colors on the hill behind this nice bull moose

    We stopped at the dump station on the way out of the park and after dumping our tank stopped to take showers ($4.50 ea). We drove north out of the park to Fairbanks. After resupplying and fueling up at Fred Meyers we headed towards the Yukon as we start to work our way home enjoying Canada along the way. We found a nice BLM campground for the night to stay at.

You can see some nice colors starting in the mountain sides

This beaver was fun to watch swimming back and forth in the lake we camped at overnight