A Visit To Fargo, ND

I Recently took a trip out to Fargo, North Dakota for a training seminar and not only did I learn more about variable frequency drives, I learned a bit about the area too. To start off, I saw this Stave Church on Google Earth when I looked around before leaving Florida, so I decided to take a closer look at it when I got there. More about this in a bit...
I flew through Minneapolis / St. Paul on my way to Fargo, but since I didn't have much time, I didn't bother my brother Jody about it.
As I sat contemplating my next flight, the sun glinting off of this moving walkway caught my attention. I mused about the marks people had made in the glass barriers as they scurried along, thinking only about catching their next flight. It's likely they didn't realize that they left something behind as an indication of their passing, something that glimmers in the sun, if only for a few minutes each day...

I eventually made it to the hotel, thanks to their courtesy bus. Since I won't have a rental car this time, any exploring I want to do will be to whatever is within walking distance. This is the view from my hotel room window and I know that there is a geocache in that little pine bush to the right of that traffic light. The problem is, that is a darn busy intersection.  So I walk down to the convention center area where the pine tree is, and there are just too many cars, so I decide to go looking for that Stave Church instead.
I had to walk across this bridge and decided to snap this picture because everything is dead with winter settling in. Back in Florida, the temps haven't even dipped below 75 yet.
Ah, I found it. Apparently, this is a replica of an existing church in Norway, and it's a darn good one too.
See what I mean? Can you imagine having built this to stand back and point at it and say; "See what I did!" Most impressive, indeed.
Here is another view frorm the opposite side. After this photo shoot, I read up about the Hjemkomst Center at my hotel room. Pretty interesting. I kinda wish I could have seen the viking ship inside, but I was a little late for that...
Ah-hah! I finally found a geocache in North Dakota! It may be the only one, but I got it!
  This is a view of the weather outside as we were attending the training course. I tell you, I don't know what that white stuff is on the ground, because it's not something we see in Florida...
And now I'm back at my hotel room. Yep, there's nothing like a room with a great view like this one has...
I couldn't help but to take a couple of shots of the cloud formations we were flying over on the way back home. You know, I think the pilots have the best seat in the house when it comes to views like this...

Happy Halloween - 2011

We did the usual haunted house and it was bigger and better than last year. Here are the pics, tell you all about it soon...

Remember, "Click-On-A-Pic" to see a larger version of an image you would see in more detail.

Well, here we are, with the usual setup. As you can see, we have the projector/theater in place again and something new, which is a 12-foot-tall inflatable pumpkin stack that we got this year.

This picture shows some of the testing we were doing with placing a table loaded full of items like dry ice in a vase, a bunch of remote-controlled electronic 'critters' on the table and behind it, not to mention some hanging pieces to the right. All of the electronics are controlled from a switch box we built and placed near the candy bowl.

Here is Brad in his costume, directing the haunted house visitors to go inside.

Katrina is all dolled up and ready to help out.

Hey! What's an 'Orc' doing in our haunted house?

This picture is the only one we took that actually captured the ambiance of the haunted house without the flash on the camera. We had specifically left the lighting kind of gloomy with an LED lamp slowly pulsing a full spectrum of colors (which is why Pic's straw hat is kinda pink at the moment). You can see the table set up behind him with all of the animated electronics, and there's even an old, wooden model ship that was donated by our neighbor across the street (thanks Sandra).

This image shows John operating the control switches for the animated electronics and Melissa at her first station. The whole stage crew pretty much rotated all night long, moving to different positions and giving their own spin on how to scare the visitors from each location. It seemed to have worked pretty well.

Here is Melissa's brother Phil. He just flew in to lend a helping 'wing'...

One of the things Phil did was set up the graveyard because Katrina was very busy getting her costume together. It looks like he did pretty well.

Ah, our first batch of visitors. You can see that Pic's straw hat really isn't pink, but a natural straw color.

Things are getting busy out front at the haunted house entrance.

If you saw the pictures from last years' haunted house, you can see that we moved the headless horseman's carriage up to the front of the yard this time. It was quite a popular spot for posing the kids for a picture.

Back inside, you can see the reactions the crew has been getting from the visitors. The little guy up front in the yellow costume is giving Melissa the 'Evil-Eye', while the little girl in the back-&-yellow striped costume at the back is in total freak-out mode.

At this point, 'Wolf' is waiting with a rubber knife to jump out at his unsuspecting victims and this Asian lady in the pink pants and her 2 girls were more than willing to reward his work with several loud (and piercing) screams. Remember, it is dimly lit in there and they can't see these guys hiding in the corners, at least until the camera's flashbulb went off...

After setting up the displays in the haunted house, we realized we still had some empty space, so we set up this table and put these items on it. It was a little thrown together, but it seemed to have worked out...

It looks like we have a traffic jam in the haunted house. We had so many people pouring through, we couldn't even count the number of visitors and as you can see here, it was more than just kids this year...

"Hi-Yah! No scary monster is gonna attack me!"

This is the exit (or Chicken Run, depending upon which way you are going) and a new element this year is that we got a bubble/fog machine that blows soap bubbles with smoke in them. They look so cool when you pop one and the smoke quickly drifts away from your hand. This trio didn't see them and missed out on the fun. An unintended result of the smoke-bubbles, is that people (young and old) would stop to pop them as they came blowing off of the roof. This exit route is called "The Chicken Run" and was named for its alternative use, which was to provide a way for frightened children to get to the candy bowl without having to go through the haunted house.

Well, we seem to have a log-jam at the door of the haunted house too! It looks like we are real popular tonight...

With a long line in front of the haunted house, an unintended result is that many of the visitors haved spilled out into the street.

Several of the parents stood back to watch their children (and significant others) make a pass through the haunted house.

This little one thought she was brave enough to take on the haunted house, but after one "GROWL!" from the beasties inside, she took off lickety-split back through the entrance.

(ZOOMED IN VIEW) The only thing faster than her is her brother, as he is leading the way back up the driveway (you can see his hand and sneaker to the left as he's running away in front of her).

Rush hour in the haunted house again. It looks like Brad is working the inside area now.

Wolf moved over to the table and is using his rubber knife to 'slice off' a piece of the severed hand on the plate in front of him. In this view, you can see the switch box used for the remote controls in Phil's left hand (behind Wolf). Also new for this year, we put up a twin-tube black light, which bathed everything in a weird blue/purple glow.

Melissa was performing an escort service for those that needed a hand to hold while making their way through the haunted house.

We''re not sure if this lady was there to have fun or not, because all she did was walk around and video all of the things we had going on, both in and around the haunted house. She didn't even talk to anybody (I smell a spy!).

This dracula-dude came in with his wife and daughter and after touring the haunted house, he told them to keep on trick-or-treating up the block and he would stay here to help us out.

He hung around for about 1/2 an hour, and got himself a few good screams too.

After taking this picture, he posed with the young lady in purple, then 'flitted' away. Leaving us to ask...

Who was that guy, anyway?

Happy Halloween!