PILES

Here is a look at the beet piles from Google Earth's lofty perch.

Here is a ground level look at the piles. Click the arrow in the lower left corner to play the video drive around.

COFFEEVILLE

The sugar beet harvest is winding down, and as the end draws near, we began to hear of a inside, out of the weather job, eight hundred miles to the South, in Coffeeville Kansas. After a bit of internet research and a phone call or two, we have it hooked up. Eight hundred miles South means milder weather, which sounds pretty good about now, since we have worked some 19* nights on the beet pile.
All of the paperwork is done, the interviews completed, and we are now officially Amazon dot com associates !
All of the employment forms arrived minutes after our first contact with the prospective employer and we quickly filled them out and sent them back. The end of the work day was at hand so the first thing the next morning, upon checking our email, we had the job.
All that remains is a 800 mile drive, after we finish up the beet pile here, and the orientation at the new site.
We will be seasonal workers at Amazon.com's large shipping facility in Coffeeville Kansas.
GREAT SHADES OF RUBY RED SLIPPERS, TOTO ! WE R' GONA' BE IN KANSAS AGAIN !
Camping fees will be paid at this location also, and we will be staying at the Elk City State Park, a U.S. Corps of Engineers Lakeside campground. After talking with the host there we learned that the new shower house is completed, but the laundry is still under construction.
We will be working four ten hour days, which will give us more time to explore the old historic areas there. The job will be from November the 8th. to December the 23rd. Which means we will have to day trip it home for Thanksgiving, and the back seat will be full of CHRISTmas presents for the trip home at the end of the assignment.
We are excited about this new assignment and are looking forward to working inside as Winter draws nearer.
A nearby Geocache that we will be sure to look up is DALTON'S REST STOP. Here is a snip from the geocache log page:
I thought this rest stop needed a cache. I am sure there is a reason there hasn't been one placed here so far but I don't know of one. You are looking for a cammoed pill bottle that is located approximately half way between the graves of Frank Dalton and his Brothers' Gang grave including Bob and Grat Dalton and Bill Powers.

If you have heard of the Dalton Gang and know the history of them then you know you are looking in a very historic place in the real American Wild West. Enjoy finding this cache as much as I did placing it.

ULTIMATE

You don't have to be around me for very long to figure out that those that have served our Country hold a special place in my heart.
While researching geocaches in the area where we are working the sugar beet harvest, I noted a travel bug that was circulating in caches of the area. It was a special travel bug. A ULTIMATE SACRIFICE travel bug. These special travel bugs recognise those that have given their lives while in the service of their fellow man. This one is in memory of Flight Lt. Paul Martin Pardoel of 47 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.
We soon got a rain day off from piling beets and Betty and I went to Fargo to the Texas Roadhouse for a late lunch. After lunch and a ice cream cone, we needed to walk a bit and I remembered that I had sent the coordinates of several likely caches for the Ultimate Sacrifice travel bug to be in, to our Garmin Colorado GPSr.
"Off the wall" is the name of the geocache and it is located North of Moorhead Minnesota. After a brief search with our Garmin Colorado GPSr, we found the cache. Paydirt ! The very first cache we went to just happened to have the Ultimate Sacrifice travel bug inside of it !
We have logged it and will carry it to a cache we have in mind, back home in the beautiful Ouachita Mountains. A little over eleven hundred miles to the South.

SIGNAGE

Have you ever been in a campground and wished you had one of these to put out front ?

There are four of these signs in one mile, two have blinking lights on them !

Lots of trucks tracking sugar beet mud onto the road ! Sometimes very large tractors have to pull them through the fields because of mud.

How did they know that I was going to leave my turn signal on ?

SCHEELS

The worlds largest all sports store, Fargo ND Here is a 25 second video of the Scheels Ferris Wheel in the atrium of the main entrance.
Attention Pete ! We laid hands on several Hobie Pro Fisherman Mirage Drive Kayaks !

SHOT

FREE ! Now that's a rare thing,but that's what the notice said. It came in the mail. The origonal notice is the green one at the bottom:

The parking and pickup point was at the Hillsboro Guard armory;


We arrived at the entrance to the civic center, were escorted through the clipboard registration while walking through the line. It was a well thought out process. It was a training exercise for local emergency professionals. It also gave a good look into the quality of planning that had been done on this exercise. The planning must have been extensive because things went so smooth, all of the way through to the exit where the busses were waiting to take us back to the armory.



However, the organizers had a suprise in store for us. Just before exiting the civic center to board the bus, we were given a Subway sandwich, a bottle of Dasani water and a bag of Lays Classic potato chips !
So, the final tally for the free event was:
2 Subway sandwiches
2 Dasani waters
2 Lays chips
2 flu shots
The flu shots have cost us around $30.each, in the past, so we think that the total of free stuff for the training exercise came to around $80.00 .
SWEET !
That's a pretty good incentive to participate in future training exercises.
Hillsboro, ND at the sugar beet harvest.

DRIVE

On a snow day off from the beet pile, we took a drive. Here is a quick look at a few of the things we saw: We saw Bison out on the Red River of the North's fertile plains.

Video link, just click the arrow to play.

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Beet lifter at rest.
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Not a house for miles, yet there is a street sign. Note the 1/2 on the sign. It was so crowded out here that they had to designate a half street !

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