Woo Hoo A Day in Town!

Hi all! I know it has been a while since I have done a post. I could give you all kinds of "reasons" but the bottom line is I was pretty down for a while and just didn't feel like it. It was easier to just let Roger do it. Anyhow I am doing better and so I thought I would at least do a short post.

I actually got to go to town yesterday! We left here about 8 am and headed in to the landing. Got there about 11 and I headed for Wasilla to do some grocery shopping and to look for a desk chair at the resale stores. I stopped on my way in at 3 Bears which is like a store between Costco and Walmart in the quantity and sizes of what they carry. I like to go there first that way if they don't have something I want I know and can look for it when I get all the way in to Wasilla. Anyway I got done there and headed the rest of the way into town. Hit the resale stores and was totally bumming cause neither of them had any desk chairs at this time. Decided I would check new ones at Walmart and Fred Meyers but all of them they had were EXPENSIVE! Most of them were also leather and I didn't want a leather one as I tend to get sweaty in those as well as I knew the cats would jump up and down from the chair and their nails tend to leave little marks. I did find a few other little items I had on my list but no chair. :-(  I have found myself not working on my craft stuff very much as the chair I have been using is very uncomfortable and so I avoid sitting at the desk.

I finished the grocery shopping, picked up some MORE parts for the snow machine and decided it was time to head back out to the landing. I had gotten done what I set out to do in town which was to get the groceries, and hopefully a new vacuum and a desk chair. I had struck out on the chair but I did manage to find a vacuum. I have been using a shop vac with attachments the past few weeks as the little vacuum we had brought with us had quit working properly and there was no more repairing so into the trash it went. Ugh!!!!!!!!! Have you ever tried to get up animal hair from a rug with just a shop vac? It takes forever and then some. About the only way to get enough suction is to use the crevice tool and go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and then do it some more. So I was happy to find what I hope will be a decent vacuum for a reasonable price.

So I am driving on the Parks Highway heading for Deshka Landing and see a sign for Big Lake Road. Hmmmmm there is a resale / pawn shop in Big Lake. Check the time, Yep got time to stop. Walk in the store and lo and behold they have 2 desk chairs. Yippee, and all that good stuff. Checked them over and bought one. It is a heavy son of a gun and you should have seen me trying to lift it into the bed of the pickup. I couldn't get the tail gate open so had to go over the top! Sure was glad it is an older truck and I didn't have to worry about "scratching" it!

I got out to the landing and looked around to see if Roger was back from the snow machine tour he had done for Craig. Didn't see him so I headed for where our sleds were parked and started to load the groceries and stuff into the totes and cooler for the trip home. In the winter you use a cooler for the stuff you don't want to freeze. Luckily a friend had told me this when I said something last fall about putting the coolers away for the winter, she laughed and said "No you will want to use them in winter for the stuff that shouldn't freeze". Another learning experience.

Anyway Roger got there and we finished loading, ate some subs that I had picked up and we left for home about 7 pm and got home about 10. Took care of what absolutely needed to be handled, sat and checked email and went to BED! I am not used to riding that many miles in one day and I am feeling it this morning that is for sure. And I get to ride again today as I am going to go spend a couple days down at Yentna Station while Roger goes to town for his Coast Guard class so that maybe he can do some guiding this summer.

Well that is it for now, sorry no pics but I need to transplant some seedlings for the garden, finish putting away the groceries and get things around for me and the boys to go for a couple days. Oh yeah and make sure that the cats are set for that time period. I will try to post a little more frequently in the future.

Thanks for sharing our adventures.
Blessings, Myra

It is Fall & Falling

The season has definitely changed here. Those who wrote the seasons on the calender did not live in this area. The temps are in the thirties almost every night, The underbrush is all but dead in the forest, The leaves are changing on the trees by the minute and the river level is dropping 3" a day, every day. Oh yea, the length of daylight is also dropping over over 7 minutes a day. We are losing well over an hour of daylight every 10 days.

WoW, what a change in a very short period of time. One great change is that the rain seems to have moved on to another region. September is typically the wettest month of the year around here but we have had only a few days of rain so far this month and the weather has been crystal clear for a week and the forecast is to remain crystal clear for the foreseeable future. This is a really nice break for me to be able to enjoy.

The down side to this great weather is the daytime bugs have come back in full force. The mosquitoes must know that there time to get blood is coming to an end for the year because they are landing stinger first. They don't even buzz you, they just pile drive that thing and start sucking immediately. Then there is this new discovery of a bug for me. I am aware of Mosquitoes, Noseams, Nat's and black flies but now we have a little biter called "white socks". It is bigger than a Noseam (you can see these) and smaller than a fly or mosquito and about the size of a Nat but they ain't a Nat. These little suckers bite like a deer fly and swarm like Nat's. They take small chunks of skin before you can feel them land and they are so small they are hard to kill with a swat. I end up smacking myself hard to kill them, then the smack hurts worse than the bite. I have resorted to the deet again, for self preservation. If you ever want to learn about bugs just come on up here, there are so many different varieties the education could be priceless. The beetles look like something out of a horror film, good thing they don't bite. They are black with white strips and war paint like markings and their tentacle's are longer than their body. The body is about one inch to an inch and a half and with the tentacle's when they land on you you think you are going to be eaten or carried away, or worse yet. My fear (nightmare) is some day they will just knock me down and just keep walking all over me. Yuck that gives me the creeps. Then we have dragon flies with a wing spread that will challenge a small eagle. If you don't pay attention it is possible to mistake one of those for a humming bird, except they are bigger.

All bugs aside, if they don't bite you, carry you away or knock you down and walk all over you, it is easy to remember they are just more of Gods creatures. It's a good thing I don't have to understand everything God does and I just remember he has a great sense of Humor and these things must be part of it!

I have made three trips to town in the last 6 days. Do you drive very often in heavy fog on a single lane road when it's icy and there are deep ditches on both sides. Well that is comparable to the concentration level it has been taking to navigate the river in the low water conditions. Now do this for three hours or more at a time. The mornings are extremely dense fog so I have been trying to wait until later in the day to drive. The later I wait each day the lower the river gets. Today, on my way home I came into an area where I knew it had been getting very shallow. I watched the current flow as far in advance as I could but when I got to the top end of this pass there was just now where to go to find deep water. It was like coming into an intersection, seeing cross traffic and not being able to stop, but you could see everything that was going to happen. There was no other way for me to get home, nowhere to turn around and nothing to do BUT, hit the throttle to full, raise the motor as high as I could and still keep it in the water and Pray. The motor hit the bottom four times, but not very hard and the boat hull never hit bottom. I made it through, took a breath and said thank you. This is supposed to be my last trip to town with the boat this year. I did bring everything up river I set out to, except the boat trailer. I just did not have the weight capacity left to haul it.

A couple of views from the grocery store parking lot. See the new doors in the back of our truck? Sometimes I think about getting a better quality camera but then I would have to get better at taking pictures because I wouldn't have an excuse.


I have no idea yet, what I am going to do about getting the boat out of the water. I don't know if I dare take a chance on one more trip ( It would be far less weight than this trip) or if I am going to try to devise some sort of skid system to pull the boat up the bank right here at our place. If I do figure out how to get it up on High shore here then I also have to know how I am going to get it back down to the water next spring. Getting it onto high shore could be done with the ATV and electric winch on it, plus the aid of a chain fall I have here. All of that should lift the boat. The bigger problem may be getting it back into the water. I can't just drive the ATV out into the river and anchor it to a tree to pull the boat back down there. The thing weighs a couple thousand pounds so I can't just carry it and it won't slide well on the dirt, hum. The last option would be to take it (the boat) back down river, put it on the trailer there and leave it then higher a plane to fly home, $ Hum again! Still thinking, I'll let you know.

I made a deal to trade the "Alaska Moving Trailer" for a large portion of the price for a Freight hauler snowmachine. I took all of the upper wood off of the trailer and brought it home. All I am trading is the frame and deck for the snowmachine plus 2 sets of axles and tires so I can make another trailer or two up here. I have to kick in a little cash but We will now have a "Heavy Hauler" snowmachine for pulling our freight this winter. This new (to us) snowmachine is a Skidoo Superwide Track (30") with a two speed transmission (low gear) and a 503cc motor. It has 4072 miles on the chassis and 160 miles on a complete motor rebuild. It had been loaned to a guy that pulled a double bottom freight sled with about 4500lbs on a 40 degree day last spring, He melted it down. It has a hole new top end and rebuilt lower end courtesy of the borrower. It was not really for sale but; it was only a back up machine for a friend of mine that has purchased a 2009 four stroke 800 cc freight sled (because he could) and he didn't really need it anymore. That is why he had loaned it out and he has decided that is not a real good idea either. I talked him into selling it to me. Hopefully it will be a nice machine for us, and we got it for a good price. I forgot to mention that after searching most of the summer I have only found a few heavy haulers for sale and they are usually over 10000 miles or 10000 dollars. I got it with less than half the miles and far less than half the price. These things are very valuable up here and skidoo has anounced they are going to quit making them after this year. Thanks God! oh yea, and Ron too!

Ok, I have been rambling long enough. I have been extremely busy and tired. It is fun to just sit down and catch up with myself, and you all, a little bit. I have a long list of projects to get done and hopefully all of the materials to do them. I should be able to schedule myself a little bit and work at a reasonable pace for a while.

Nice talking to you, hope to do it again real soon.

Thanks for listening and sharing!

Roger

A couple of more pics from todays trip. I was too busy driving to stop and take pics with mountains in the background and the colors up front. The river was just to tight to do it alone on those areas but, wow, thanks god for the views. Use your imagination, it won't get you all the way to the reality of it!