What an awesome place to let your kids run off some energy! I love the quaint location and the fact…read morethat admission is FREE! For $20 you get 25 tickets and rides are only 2-3 tickets! From roller coaster, to Ferris wheel, bumper cars and swings--this place is a must for the whole family! And of course, you can't forget the Super Slide! Going on a hot day? Have a water balloon fight for only two tickets! We had a great time and will definitely visit again.

Pure nostalgia. It was great fun in the youth and it continues to be as I take my kods there. Best…read moremini golf in ND!

I spent a week camping there and had a very positive experience…read more If you're looking for a place to camp in Bismarck, you can't beat the price or the location of General Sibley Campground. Location: This campground is in a peaceful, quiet spot in a local park, under a canopy of beautiful cottonwoods and near the river. You could hear owls at night and see other wildlife during the day. But it is also close enough to amenities -- grocery stores, restaurants, downtown Bismarck -- to be convenient. Several times, I picked up takeout dinner and brought it back to the picnic table near my campsite, and the food was still hot when I got it back there. Usually, campsites this close to stores/restaurants are surrounded by freeway noise and polluted air, so this place is a rare exception. Price: If you're familiar with the Bismarck-Mandan area, you're aware that the cost of lodging has gotten insanely expensive in the last decade or so. During my last week-long trip back to Bismarck, I didn't originally intend to camp. I was debating between staying at a motel or camping. But for a last-minute hotel reservation, I would have been paying more than 10x more per night for a hotel room than I paid to camp here. For $13/night (update: I see their website says $14/night now; still a great deal!), this is the best you'll find. Other campground logistics: -You can park right where you pitch your tent, which is really nice. -Another reviewer commented that the bathrooms with the showers are a bit far away. That's true, but I'd rather have 5-minute walk to the shower than be camped right in the middle of bathroom traffic. You could pick a site closer to the bathroom if that is an issue. -Things got a little louder on the weekend I was there, but only Saturday night were people rowdy/loud past 10pm. -Trash cans were overflowing for part of the week I stayed there, so they could definitely use more frequent trash pickup. -The vibe here is a lot more "quiet, travelers minding their own business" rather than "party campground" which was a big reason I stayed as long as I did. I left my tent pitched and drove away to do other things during the day. Nobody entered my campsite or messed with my stuff. There are not many campgrounds where it's still safe to do this. Thanks again to the staff at General Sibley Campground for an awesome stay!

General Sibley Park is top notch!…read more As a campground for RV's and Tents, this place has everything! It is located 4 miles south of downtown Bismarck, North Dakota. So...one moment you can be in the heart of Bismarck, and next thing coming here, you're surrounded by trees, grass, peace and quietness. How convenient. Using the trusty ole app on my phone called CAMPENDIUM, I made a reservation to stay here. The process was simple and stress free and before I knew it...I was setting up my tent in a beautiful park with plenty of green grass all around. It was a terrific atmosphere, and for early June, the campground was barely occupied. If you don't use Campendium, reservations can be made at generalsibley.bisparks.org Or...you can simply show up spontaneously. Btw...one thing I want to say off the top of my head...this place had so much fluffy grass all over the park to conveniently set up my tent...it was a luxury. There's nothing like sleeping on well kept grass making a nights sleep much more comfortable. Once at the park, you have to check-in at the office. Then, you get to pick any campsite/area you want. At this rate...let me do some copying and pasting from the park's website, which has very useful information... Here are the Office Hours... Monday-Friday, 11am-8pm Memorial Day-Labor Day: Monday-Sunday, 10am-9pm Office Phone: 701-222-1844 Camping seasons typically run from early May through early October. Here are the Camping Fees... Tent camping: $12/tent/night - this is an absolute bargain! RV campsites with electricity: $25/night - great price for RV's! Firewood: $6/bundle Ice: $4/bag Ice Cream Treats: $1 - lol, I never tried the ice cream. Extra Notes About Camping... "There is a designated tent camping area though there are no designated sites. Campers are allowed to set up their tents anywhere within the mowed tent area". "No reservations are needed or accepted in the tent area. Campers can register in the office during office hours or use the self-registration box after-hours". "Please know there is plenty of space available in the tent camping area of the park. This area has never reached capacity, even on the busiest of holidays and weekends". - There are over 100 campsites located within the park. That's a lot of space to accommodate people! - Cell phone reception works perfectly. I got to stream a movie in my tent at night. - Each campsite has a minimum of 30-amp electricity. This is always a big bonus for road-trip travelers...to be able to charge electronics. - Campsites also have fire pits and picnic tables for barbecuing. - There's a shower house in the center of the park. I picked a site nearby so I wouldn't have to walk far carrying my toiletries. Hot water was plentiful and you can take a shower for as long as you'd like. There are flush toilets inside this shower house. There were mirrors as well for shaving and or combing your hair. - I will say for visiting in the early spring part of the season, it did get cold at night. In fact, I had to use my Mr. Heater Buddy to stay warm. Lastly, I was trying to think about my fond memories from being here...was there anything missing at this park that could have made my experience better? Could General Sibley be the best campground I have ever stayed at??? ...I just want to say, lol, there was a campground 2 years ago in Houghton, Michigan that actually featured WiFi on their grounds. That was pretty impressive! But, regardless...I thoroughly enjoyed my time at General Sibley Park. In the end, I decided to hang around Bismarck an extra day and stay here another evening. That's how much I liked this place, deserving of 5 stars...overall, as good as it gets.

I was shopping for a gym. I want to be transparent about what that process looked like for a person…read morein my situation, which is a person who has never belonged to a gym, has no framework for evaluating gyms, and was operating on the assumption that gyms were broadly similar to each other in the way that parking lots are broadly similar to each other. I was wrong about this. I am getting ahead of myself. I stopped in unannounced. No appointment. No warning. I simply appeared, in the way that people appear when they have made a decision in a parking lot and are acting on it before the decision changes its mind. I was prepared to look at a brochure, take a pamphlet and leave with the information I needed to continue not joining a gym for several more weeks. Christina was at the front. I want to be specific about what happened next because I think it matters and because I have been to places where walking in unannounced produces an expression on the face of the staff that communicates, with considerable efficiency, that your timing is inconvenient. That expression did not appear. Christina was genuinely pleased to see me, or performed genuine pleasure with such commitment that I cannot tell the difference. She offered a full tour. Not a partial tour. Not a gesture toward the general area of the equipment. A full tour, conducted with the calm enthusiasm of a person who likes where they work and wants you to understand why. She showed me everything. The gym itself, which is well-equipped and does not feel like a place that has been arranged to photograph well and experienced differently. The class spaces, which are large enough to suggest that the classes are a genuine offering and not an afterthought. The women-only gym, which is a separate dedicated space and not simply a corner with a curtain. I mention this because the distinction matters and because I was not expecting it and because the thoughtfulness of that decision tells you something about how this particular gym thinks about the people who use it. She explained the programs. She explained the membership options. She explained what each thing included, what it cost and what it did not include, in language I could follow without needing to ask her to repeat herself. There were no contracts. I want to note that I asked about this directly because I am a person who has read enough about gym memberships to know that the contract conversation is where things sometimes become uncomfortable. It did not become uncomfortable. There were no contracts. She said it plainly. I believed her. That was the whole conversation. I did not feel at any point that I was bothering her. This sounds like a low bar. It is not a low bar. It is, in my experience of showing up to places unannounced with questions, a bar that is cleared less often than you would hope. I asked about personal trainers. I was expecting to be handed a list of names and left to make a decision I had no qualifications to make. What actually happened was that she explained a process. Someone would call me. They would talk with me about what I was looking for. They would match me with a trainer who was a good fit for my specific situation. I want to be clear that I received this information with polite skepticism because it sounded like the kind of thing people say when they want you to feel good about a decision you have not yet made. They called. They asked the right questions. They matched me with Lexi Bata. I have now had fifteen sessions with Lexi Bata and I am filling every available review slot on every platform that will accept text, which should tell you something about how the matching process went. Christina told me they would find me a great fit. I did not fully believe her. She was right. I am documenting this publicly because she deserves the credit and because I think it is important to tell people when something worked exactly the way someone said it would. Proximal 50 North is a good gym. Christina is a reason to walk in. The matching process is a reason to stay. Stop in unannounced if you want. I did. It worked out.

Nice, clean, spacious workout studio. The layout is a little weird. I took a spin class and there…read morewas only a speaker in the front and it was hard to hear the teacher. Good workout however. Also The workout room up stairs is very narrow and mirrors are poorly placed. The view is awesome when the sun isn't blinding your eyes. They need to pay attention to a few more details before I think about joining.

Stopped by for the Saturday morning barbell class. It was great. We got a nice 10 min self warmup…read moreand stretched. They have foam rollers, bands, dowels and lighter weights. We worked on snatches and cleans. I'm not good at either lifts so it was great to work on these two specifically. Katie was a great coach!

Best gym around, maybe anywhere. The group is always very inviting and friendly while also being…read morehelpful in learning new movements or surpassing old milestones. The coaches are very knowledgeable and pass this knowledge on through very thorough demos. The warmups are always really fun too, which adds to the fun group atmosphere. I highly recommend this gym.

wonderful time and guests! We shot much more than we anticipated and the guys were great!read more

I rate this experience based on a 1-5 scale (1 is lowest) Lodging 1, Food 2, Guide Knowledge 1,…read moreDuck Hunting 0, Goose Hunting 3, Pheasant Hunting 1. There were no ducks due to freeze out and outfitter refused to adjust hunting pattern. There were millions of geese dry feeding everywhere. Instead we had one dry field goose hunt in 4 days. On that one hunt where was something wrong with our decoy spread but we still took over 30 geese with 8 shooters, realistically we should have taken well over 100 if things were right. There were very few Pheasants and we hunted over ground that had been over hunted. Don't even bother. Waste of time and money. Lodging was deplorable. 10 people to a single toilet and crammed into one room on 3 high bunk beds Food started out great with steak night. Then rapidly when south. We were promised a chef but that didn't happen. Drives to hunting areas were well over 1 hour but most close to 2 hours. This outfitter did not have leased propertied instead relying on getting permission from private land owners along with everyone else. Most of us concluded that this was the reason for the long drives. This was very disappointing given that millions of geese were out their back door on the Missouri River. As an experienced waterfowl and Pheasant hunter for over 50 years, I recommend that you not waste your time or money on Cold Water Outfitters, ND

I want to establish my credentials before proceeding, because I think they are relevant…read more I am not a gym person. I want to be precise about this. I am not a lapsed gym person, or a former gym person who fell off the wagon, or a gym-curious person who simply never committed. I am a person for whom the gym existed entirely outside the boundaries of my daily life for the entirety of my adult existence. I work in information technology. I sit. I have sat with great consistency and no complaints for approximately three decades. My body and I had an understanding, and that understanding did not involve barbells...until now. I walked into Proximal 50 with the energy of a man who has made a decision and is now in the parking lot reconsidering it. I had no vocabulary. I had no frame of reference. I had a vague awareness that gyms contained equipment and that equipment had purposes, but the specifics were genuinely unavailable to me. And then I met Lexi Bata. I had expectations about what a personal trainer would be. Those expectations were formed entirely by cultural osmosis and were wrong in nearly every particular. I was expecting someone loud. I was expecting someone who would regard my current physical condition the way a contractor regards a badly neglected house. I was expecting to be pushed in ways that suggested the pusher had forgotten I was a person and not a goal. Lexi is soft-spoken. I want you to sit with that for a moment. Soft-spoken. Calm. Genuinely happy to be there, which I found disorienting at first because I was not sure I happy to be there and assumed that sentiment was shared by all parties. It was not. She was delighted. She remains delighted. Forty-five minutes twice a week with a person who is visibly pleased to be doing what they do is a remarkably pleasant way to spend time. I did not dread it coming in. I do not dread it now. Several people told me I would dread it. Those people were wrong and I intend to tell them so (I'm looking at you, Carl). She explained things. She explained why we were doing things, not just what, which matters to a person who works in IT because we are suspicious of processes we do not understand. When she demonstrated an exercise she made it look easy. It was not easy. This is not a criticism. This is an observation about the gap between watching a thing and doing a thing, which turned out to be considerable. I have been introduced to the Elevated Heel Goblet Squat and the Russian Twist. I want to address these directly. When Lexi first mentioned them I assumed they were beverages. They are not beverages. They are exercises with names chosen, I believe, to keep non-gym people slightly off-balance. I do them now. Without falling over, mostly. This is progress. The warehouse training space deserves mention. Being in a dedicated area separate from the main gym floor made the experience of being a complete beginner significantly less fraught. I was not performing my ignorance in front of an audience. I was simply learning, in a space designed for learning, with an instructor who treated every question as entirely reasonable. I also need to address the music. I do not know who controls the playlist at Proximal 50 but I would like to ask them several questions. In a single session I have heard Cyndi Lauper's Girls Just Want to Have Fun, a techno arrangement of a Metallica composition I did not know could exist in that form, and Fishin' in the Dark by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Back to back. Without explanation. I find this tremendously amusing and ask that no one change it. Lexi knows when to push. She pushes in the way a person pushes when they know what you have in reserve and want you to find it, not in the way a person pushes when they have forgotten your name. There is a difference. I notice it every session. I came in knowing nothing. Fifteen sessions later I am writing this in genuine surprise at how much I enjoy something I was prepared to merely endure. Go to Proximal 50. Ask for Lexi Bata. Bring your ignorance. Bring your skepticism about the playlist. Be prepared to hear Black Sabbath done by a marching band. She will know what to do with all of it.

This is a really nice hybrid gym concept in downtown Bismarck. They have "crossfit" style classes…read moreas well as a normal gym setup, split into two rooms. One room (the one that usually has the classes) has full squat racks, lifting platforms, and barbells with bumper plates, which is awesome. The other room has more machines and some free weights like dumbells. There is also a squat rack in that room, but I was perplexed as to why the rubber mat that's under it ends so close to it; it makes it hard to squat if you don't like squatting on bare concrete (which has less traction). I got a free day pass from the Radisson, and the checkin process was easy and painless. Bathrooms are large and clean, and there's showers too. One sort of weird thing about this gym were all the signs they had posted around with rules...I'm not sure how strict they are about enforcing them, but I feel like all the rules posted everywhere was maybe a bit much. All in all, a nice option for dropping in if you are in Bismarck and want to get a workout in.

Ever seen a sundial? Optimist family park is the only park in this city that features one. Some…read moreother features of this park are a basketball court, horseshoe pit, reservable picnic shelters, sand volleyball courts, decent sized grass fields and restrooms that are nicer than at most parks. Located in a friendly neighborhood, this is small park is perfect if you got a hour or two to just chill. It isn't crowded and has pretty much all you are looking for in a park.

This giant bubble is the Mandan Tennis Center! They have four outdoor pickleball courts that are…read morefree and first come, first serve. The hours for the outdoor courts are from sunrise to sunset. During the month of May, that's 6am-9pm. The courts are will maintained and clean. We went early in the morning after sunrise and there was no one in sight around 6-7am during the week. They have indoor courts for tennis and pickleball, but they charge per person. I believe the also have rental equipment. There's plenty of parking available in their large lot.