Making Progress

Roger working hard at "Retirement"

Well, we are making progress on the back porch. I am looking forward to being able to move some stuff out of the cabin and into the porch. Roger has been working on the porch daily as long as God cooperates and it doesn't rain. Which it does seem to do almost every evening lately but that is better than all day long like it did for 31 days in a row earlier this summer.

Making Mud Pies to bring Home!

Even with all the rain we have had I am constantly dealing with dust and dirt. I can't imagine why. LOL

I have been working on my "craft " area upstairs which to this point consists mainly of hauling the totes of stuff up there and unpacking them to figure out what I have and don't have. One of the things I no longer have is envelopes for my stamping / cards. They all got damp and the glue stuck them shut! Guess I have plenty of "scratch" paper now. I need to get started on curtains for the cabin soon. I am going to make some "quilted" ones that hopefully will help keep the warm in and the cold out. Time will tell.

The Bears Have Struck

Oh yeah I mentioned the bears tearing up the screen while we were gone the last time. Here is a picture of what they did. We were going to put like three windows in the back porch but have decided to only put one on the highest side so that maybe the bears won't try to get in that way. We have found out from several people in the area though that we are not the only ones having bear issues this year. That is kind of nice to know as many of these folks have been here for 20+ years and they are having some trouble also.

We are trying to get a really good shopping list put together for the next and possibly last trip to town for a while. There is an awful lot to take into consideration. Not only food for us but also for the animals, fuel for cooking and backup heat, also snowmachines and ATV's. Then there is the stuff needed for all the projects around here that still need done or finished. We are also going to be getting a new stove / oven!  The one that is here is out of an RV and is very small. The last time I made bread it rose so high in the oven that it hit the top and fell! I know I am forgetting something that we need to stock up on but that is why I have done an inventory of what we have including things like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. And if we think of something we try to put it on the shopping list right away so that we don't forget cause it's not like "Oh well I can run to .......tomorrow"!

Sunset on the Yentna River

I know Roger posted some of the sunset pictures from the other night (which I took by the way) but I am going to add a couple here that I really like. God's handiwork is so awesome up here that words can't begin to describe it. And the pictures don't do justice either but it is the best I can do to share this incredible journey with all of you. Blessings, Myra

Incredible!

Final Move?

Hi All. Wow has it been a busy week!
On the 21st Roger called Eric, the fella that owns the Mammoth barge, to find out about having him bring up the rest of our stuff from the landing. Eric has been hauling contaminated dirt for the EPA from Skwentna down to Deshka Landing where it is then loaded into containers. Any how on most of those trips the barge comes back empty and Eric had said a while back that if he got the contract for the dirt that he would give us a deal on bringing the rest of our stuff up.
The original plan was that on Monday the 23rd we would meet the barge at the landing and the crane would just lift the trailer with the rest of the stuff into the barge and we would go over to Eric's place on the ATV's and between our 2 atv's and his we would just pull the trailer off the barge and he would let us haul from there and tear the trailer down and bring it back here to our place in pieces. So we went to town on Sunday morning, did a bunch of stock up shopping for freeze up, went back to the landing loaded it all in the trailer to come up on the barge and finally got some supper around 10 p.m. and some sleep so that we could be at the landing by 9:30 a.m.
OK so do we all know how the best laid plans go?

The crane wasn't big enough to pick up the trailer! Therefore we had to unload the trailer and hand load everything onto the barge. There is a rather steep hill (not real long though thankfully) that we had to get everything down to put it on the barge. Luckily we had brought Vinnie (16 y/o foster son of Dan & Jean) and Eric had a young man Chris with him so we were able to make a chain and pass things along rather than go up and down that hill. We had the crane move the snowmachines over from the trailer to the barge though.

Flying Snowmachine!

Our Landing

Our boat was loaded with fuel and propane and we were overloaded as usual. We did get to see the seals though at the junction of the Susitna and Yentna Rivers.

We stopped at Yentna Station aka Dan & Jean's and picked up Anthony  and the dogs and left some of the fuel there until we took the boys back. The boys helped unload the barge at our landing and haul stuff to the cabin from the landing. Monday was another loooooooong day!

Tuesday Roger and the boys went fishing and then Roger took them home and picked up the rest of our fuel. I worked on finding a path through the maze that is here at the moment!

One of the things we had bought in town was a "garage" that we were going to use as a back porch for now so that we would have some storage space for stuff that it wouldn't matter if it froze. Long story short, what started as a 2 hour project has already been 2 days and we still have a few more to go as we are building the actual porch. Roger decided that we might as well put the floor in the "Temporary porch" rather than backfilling holes etc from the work on the pilings and some other digging that had been done in that area. We now have the cabin jacked up to where he wanted (sitting on cribs, not pilings), the porch floor and since we went this far well we might as well just do the porch!~

Oh yeah the bears were here again while we were in town and tore the heck out of one of the window screens and there are also scratches on the side of the cabin. Kind of wonder if they were trying to get the cats.

Anyway now you know what this week has been and why no posts. TOO TIRED!

Thanks for sharing our adventure.

Blessings, Myra

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggg those darn Bears!

Denali (Mt McKinley) on Right

Hi all. It is Friday night and we made it safely back from town yesterday evening. We stopped by Yentna Station Roadhouse on the way home and picked up Anthony, Dan and Jeans 12 year old foster son who has been driving all of us nuts wanting to come and stay with us for a few days. It is different having someone else around besides just the two of us and the critters.

The bears visited again while we were in town and ransacked the burning barrel and also our miniature "root cellar" that Roger had dug a fed weeks ago so we could at least keep a few refrigerated things. Roger had put a half a salmon in there and forgot to get rid of it before we went into town. Needless to say they not only got the salmon but also the cheese, eggs and butter that were in there.       :(

I have been busy trying to find places to put stuff in the cabin, especially groceries as we have started to stock up for "freeze up". It can be quite a while that the river in unusable to travel either by boat or snowmachine. We did bring up the refrigerator and a small chest freezer but do not have them up and running yet. Soon I hope. Our inverter did come yesterday, Tom from Bentalit Lodge which is about 2 miles from us and that we can drive to on ATV's picked up our mail when he went and it was in!!!!!  We went over there today and got the mail from them and filled water jugs.

Roger jacked up the cabin a couple inches today, taking it slow and easy and letting things settle each few inches. It has been a challenge to do with all the rain we have had. Today was the 27th day in a row that it rained! It has been one of the wettest, cloudiest, gloomiest summers on record here. :-(  And even with all the rain it is still dustier than all get out in this cabin! Nothing seems to stop the dust.

Well that is about all for tonight from me. Thanks for sharing our adventure.
Blessings, Myra