25-28 Feb 2011 - Lots and Lots of wind...

The wind started blowing in earnest on Friday (25th) and grew and grew and grew!  It was by far the worst windstorm we've ever been through.  We spent a day and night being bounced and buffeted.  If you went outside you got pelted by sand (not much dust though) but it sure got tiresome being stuck inside all the time.  We both got lots of writing done!  It began decreasing in stages on Saturday then the rain began coming down and it rained hard several times Saturday night.  We hadn't been able to put the solar panel out Friday or Saturday due to the high winds so we ran out of battery power Saturday evening.  We used a battery lantern for awhile to read with then went to bed a little early Saturday evening.  Sunday it was cloudy with intermittent light rain but cleared off and was sunny again by Sunday afternoon.  I put the solar panel back out Sunday morning despite the cloudy weather and by evening the battery was back to full power.  I washed dishes Sunday afternoon and Susan went on a long bicycle ride.

Hmmm!  This writing stuff doesn't look that hard.  Maybe I'll change the pasword to something like "catsrule."

Or maybe I'll take a nap instead.

Susan decided to make orange muffins using tang for the orange flavoring and color.

Yep! ... They're pretty good!  (The dog will just have to take my word for it.)

The waves after two days of high winds.

The dog didn't even like being outside.

Susan having a bad hair day!

You had to be careful coming in or out or the wind would blow you right off the ramp.  It took two hands to close the door to the camper and sometimes it took two people to get it closed.

On cold days Susan like to do some baking.  First because the food is good and second because it helps warm up the camper.  She doesn't have much counter space so puts the cutting board on the floor to roll out the dough.  It's my job to keep the cat and dog at bay.

She's taking biscuits out of the top rack so she can put the pie in their place.

It's as good as it looks!

The wind finally calmed down so Odie and I could go for our normal morning bike ride. (Okay, she runs, I ride the bike!)

Susie the sun lizard!  We still had a little wind so she used the hood of the U-Haul to lay on.  The truck's box shielded her from the wind and the sun was far enough west to provide a little solar heat.

We had rose hip tea for supper.  We picked and dried these at home.

My request for supper was beans and dumplings with bacon added in.  The bacon is some Susan canned at home.

It just needed browned.

She fried the biscuits in the bacon grease, then ...

put them aside and cooked the beans and bacon strips together.  The beans are some she'd cooked and dehydrated at home.  Since they were already cooked she only needed to re-hydrate them and heat them to make them ready to eat.

Mix it all together and we had three of the four basic food groups in Kentucky (Beans, bacon, lard and whiskey ... she forgot to bring any whiskey!)

The moon just before sunrise this morning (Monday the 28th).

Vec.  This is Echo Bay viewed from our "front porch" with the telephoto feature in use.

22-24 February, 2011 Cold ride "home"....

The internet at the library was extrememly slow.  I had to break my DT blog into two parts because it timed out before it would post.  Fortunately I copied it before trying to post so I didn't lose anything.  Susan lost her entire post and had to re-do it.  The library closed before she finished so we took the motorcycle home.  It was in the late evening and the temperature had dropped considerably.  When we got to the camper it was 37 degrees.  Very invigorating on a motorcycle!  We went back into town to finish up her blog the next day but we made sure we were home long before dark.  While in town we bought some new spark plugs for the motorcycle.  We had chicken and dumlings for supper (cooked in the solar cooker).

Green grass ... Susan took this to send the picture home to our kids. They just got over 18 inches of new snow and temperatures below zero for several days. We thought we'd rub it in just a little bit!  Of course the kids that do snow-plowing were making lots of money so they didn't mind the snow too much.

Susan took the dog swimming in the lake.  Notice that she wore her dry-suit! 

Odie surveying her kingdom.

Had a flat tire on the bicycle.

Turned out I'd run a thorn through the sidewall of the tire so I patched the hole.

This got Susan's attention.  I was shaking the sand out of the tire before putting the tube back in.

Susan did a load of laundry down by the beach (with Odie's help of course!).

We moved the picninc table out and tied to clothesline to the picnic table, the truck's mirror and the back corner of the truck.

Susan decided to make some sprouts.  Alfalfa seed is our favorite but this is a mixture of peas, beans, etc. we're going to try out.

The fixin's for chili...

She used the solar cooker but she had to put it beside the truck to protect it from the wind. I spent most of the day writing.  We watched a movie in the evening then hit the sack!  The wind came up in the night and blew pretty hard.  We found out though that it was just getting warmed up for the real wind coming the next day!

22 February 2011, Stormy weather and Kayaks

We had some stormy weather this weekend including high winds and rain.  One thing is for sure ... it's a lot better being inthe U-Haul than in a tent in bad weather!

This is the stove we use for cooking indoors.  It's coleman single burner propane stove.  The rack is what we use when Susan is going to bake something.  (It's also the same rack we use over the fire for grilling stuff.)

She puts the coleman camp oven on top of the rack with the vent hole directly over the stove's burner.

This is what it looks like when she's suing it.

She puts aluminum foil over the top and sides to get the heat up faster and save on propane.

This morning's menu included sausage, biscuits and gravy.  She took some of the biscuit dough, rolled it out in a strip and added some cinnamon and brown sugar then rolled them into cinnamon rolls.  Add a little frosting and they were very good.

These rivalled any you can buy at the store!

The sausage is already cooked in the canning process so all she has to do is heat them up.

Sausage cooked and set on top of the oven to stay warm as the biscuits and gravy are made.

Great start to a long day of fun!

I never did find a car wash so I washed the bike with a bucket of water and a sponge.

During the stormy weather we found out a couple of our windows leaked.  Susan is outside applying duct tape over the window to stop the leak until the rain lets up.

What it looked like after the sun came out!

A rainy day spent inside with books, computers, movies and the cat and dog for entertainment.

Me and the mutt coaxing the fire to life.

Dishwashing time!

One afternoon we took the kayaks out on the lake just to paddle around a bit.

We're a couple of miles from camp and about to head in.  Right after this picture the wind came up and the lake got kinda' rough.  The kayaks are designed for rough water but the wind was a challenge in such a lightweight boat.  Getting back to our bay in that cross-wind was work!

The dog and cat posing for pictures.

The dog and cat in "normal" mode.

Those specs in the water are fish.  There were several schools of them in this bay.  I'd guess probably three hundred or so fish in all.  Most looked to be about 18 to 24 inches long.  I don't know what kind they were.

We found this spring seeping out of a small cave.

Susan made some "mexican" food out of our dehydrated food.  This contains dehydrated beans (already cooked then dehydrated so you just have to add water, heat and eat), dried onions, tomatoes, peppers, and rice (the rice had also been cooked prior to drying it).

 Add some water in the morning and by evening it's ready to heat and eat with some crumpled up taco shells added to the mix.

Don't forget to see Susan's blog at http://gypsysuebugginout.blogspot.com/ for more details of what we've been doing.