Around 300 children participated in the 21st annual Kids Fishing Day at the Dickinson Dike on Saturday morning.
Families set up all around the dike throughout the morning, casting their lines — many for the first time.
To learn more, check out the video above and photo gallery from the event.
REGENT — This small southwest North Dakota town typically has two busy seasons: harvest and hunting.
The latter kicks off this morning with the opening of the state’s pheasant hunting season — and Regent is one of the places to be.
Like many rural North Dakota towns this weekend, Regent’s population of about 170 more than doubles, and bars and the little lodging it has fi ll up as hunters from around the state and nation flock to the outdoorsman’s paradise.
“It gets crazy,” said Karen Kouba, co-owner of the Cannonball Saloon and the city’s auditor. “It’s hard to find help just for this period of time. But I think we’re staffed OK this year.”
Continue reading “Pheasant outlook optimistic: Hunters flock to Regent as season begins”
When we visit my wife’s parents in Montana, there’s nothing we like to do more than to load up her dad’s four-wheelers and head to the nearby mountains to do a little off-roading and motorized mountain climbing.
Growing up on a southwest North Dakota farm, I know a little something about isolation. But honestly, it doesn’t compare to being on a remote mountain, 25 miles from the nearest city and six miles from the nearest ranch — with the only way in or out being a rocky, five-foot wide trail — that gives one a true sense of seclusion.
This time, however, that seclusion nearly got the best of us. No, we didn’t have some sort of injury or major mishap. Just comical misfortune that delayed a wonderful day.
Last fall, after two years of listening to input from the public, special-interest groups and government agencies, the North Dakota Industrial Commission got serious about creating a list of “extraordinary places.”
Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem in December designated a list of 18 special places in western North Dakota and crafted a proposed set of rules aimed at limiting the impact of energy exploration in those areas.
Great, right? Republicans working in harmony with the environmental groups to soften oil’s impact on the state? “Is this heaven?” we asked. “No, it’s North Dakota,” they responded.
Too bad it’s a little more complicated than that.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK NORTH UNIT — Ron Sams remembers a time when very little of note happened here.
The U.S. law enforcement park ranger worked in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park from 1999 to 2001 before being transferred through the Department of the Interior.
He returned to the North Unit in 2008, just as the Bakken oil boom and all that came with it was beginning to dig into the northwest part of North Dakota.
“When I left here, I remember how quiet it was. When I came back, that was not the case any longer,” Sams said. “I’m not saying we’re as busy as Yosemite or some of the other parks I’ve worked in, but I’m seeing some of the same crimes here that I saw in other places. I should have expected it, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. But sleepy little Watford City, I think it surprised all of us.”
Dustin Monke 