1-9 August, 2011 Cabin Building, Wedding and Grandkids (and Kids)

We seem to have plenty to do around here.  The cabin building is progressing slowly but surely to getting the roof on.  It's a little unconventional in places due to cost considerations but should hold together for a good many years.

We have the timbers laid out on the foundation blocks and built the floor on the timbers.  This is Victor's first time building a cabin so he's pretty excited and learning a lot ... I jut hope the teacher knows what he's doing!

The final floor joist going into place ...

Next we put some bracing boards between the joist to stiffen things up a bit.  Since we're building on timbers instead of a regular foundation I like plenty of bracing to keep the joist from "rolling" or "twisting" over time.

We laid out the rafters and marked them for cutting once we had the floor on.  It's the last time I'll have a large flat and level surface to work on before we put the walls up.  Once they were marked we laid them aside until later.

The two narrow walls up ...

The south wall going up.  The window opening cut and ready for the double pane window.  The window was bought for ten dollars from the Habitat for Humanity store many years ago.  We've had it stored until we needed it.  It measures 72 inches by 36 inches and will make a great addition to the south wall.

The north wall up.  The entry door will be on the right corner.

Susan is charging the battery out of the Uhaul.  Its the same panel we used in Nevada.

A neighbor used a couple of big steel culverts for planters.  They cover them at night and have a large water barrel in each one to help retain heat at night.  It's looking like a good plan.

Our service berries are getting rile now.  The race is between us and the birds to see who gets the most.

We watered the garden last week.  I had stored excess rain water in six of our water barrels and needed to pump them into the main tank.  I used to siphon them in but it takes about 45 minutes per barrel and I didn't want to wait that long so I modified my suction pipe on the gas powered water pump so it would fit in the barrels and ...

Put the pump on the picnic table to get it the right height and pumped the water from the barrels into the main tank.  I also needed the barrels for hauling more water in the truck.  I made two trip to the neighbor's for more water so we used about 700 gallons of water for the garden that day.  I siphon the water from the barrels in the truck into the main tank to be pumped to the garden under pressure.  The last 300 gallons was put in the main tank for use next time.

Susan took advantage of our sunny days to use the solar cooker.

We needed to go to Kalispell on Saturday to take care of a grandson because both parents had to work.  We picked him up and then visited another set of kids/grand kids.

As usual some of the grand kids wanted to show us what they could now do that they couldn't do before.  This is Andrew riding his bike.

Jonathan wanted to show off his large bike because he'd outgrown his other one.

Dad and son.  Scott (the young-un') was just told he couldn't play with the reading light.

It's bedtime now so Scott's getting settled in.

More of the harvest ... raspberries, strawberries and service berries.

More grand kids playing at home here.  I helped their dad put new universal joints on the front axles of his 4X4 pickup which kept us busy for a couple of hours while the kids played.  After that we barbecued some hamburgers for dinner.  A lightning storm moved in which delayed our plans to go fishing for awhile.  The skies cleared up a couple of hours later so we managed to get in a couple of hours at the lake before it got dark.  The fishing was fair.  The three boys, mom and dad and I went fishing.  Mom was in the kayak, the guys were all in our 12 foot boat.  Susan stayed home with Anna. We all caught fish.  Kevin caught the largest and the smallest fish.  The largest was a 24 inch pike and the smallest was a four inch pike.  He looked like a green striped pencil on the end of the line.  I caught one pike that was small enough to slip through the weave on the net. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me to take pictures.

The boys sorting through toys from "Grandma's toy box."

Anna doing some stump sitting.  I wonder what grandma was doing to make her smile for the picture!

I put a broomstick on an old rifle stock for the kids to play with.  They improvised their own "scope" by draping a pair of toy binoculars over the barrel.

While we were waiting for the weather to clear the boys decided that they wanted some boats to play with so we made some from old wood scraps.  This is Jonathan's design.  The sails are plastic cut from a bucket top.  David's is similar but I used a piece of aluminum for his sail (one).  Andrew had a "helicopter" boat and we put a propeller made out of a can bottom on the top of his. Andrew doesn't march to the beat of a different drummer ... he is the drummer.  They had more fun with these than the store bought boats in the toy box.

Our youngest some got married Sunday afternoon at the lake.  This was taken in his final moments of freedom.

His beautiful bride in her final moments of freedom.

The bride and groom and their parents.  I have about two-hundred pictures to go through yet so these are just the early ones.

27-31 July, 2011 Fishing and ripping, bikes and tykes...

The weather has cleared up finally and my allergies were improving ... until today.  Oh well.  Overall we've kept busy.  We had a neighbor who hit a deer and stopped by to see if I could patch his radiator.  He took it out and I soldered the seam back on the lower radiator outlet neck and it's been holding so far.  No money changed hands but when I need help with something he'll be there to lend a hand.  We also share books and I returned a couple of his I borrowed.  Hmmm.  ... We were just talking the other day about being tired of loaning things then having to go get them back.  I hate it when I point a finger at someone else and there's three pointing back at me. ...

Wednesday Susan and I decided to ride bikes in to get the mail.  It's seven miles each way but we lucked out and met Barbara and Victor filling water jugs at Fortine and hitched a ride back with them.  We sidestepped a thunderstorm.  Our son called about the time we got home and they got drenched where he works at the golf course.

It's been a little chilly in the mornings so we often fire up the stove to take the chill out.  Here we have an extra kettle of water on the stove for baths later.  We call it "home-improvement."

I still needed to get some batteries to return to Costco to get our core charge back so I swiped one from a junk vehicle we had on the property.  Even though it only took a few minutes it seemed like a lot of work just to get a battery out.  I scrounged around until I found five more so we could get our core charge refunded for all six of the batteries we'd bought. 

I got my handy-dandy el-cheapo lumber maker out to cut some timbers for Barbara and Victor's cabin.  It's the first time I've used it so I was anxious to see how well it did.  It does a decent job but works the chainsaw pretty hard.  I used a full tank of gasoline for each direction on the small logs (12 to 18 inches in diameter) and three tanks to make both cuts on the large log.  I don't have a rip chain but I'm going to get one if I do this again.  It's a dirty job too.  I was covered in sawdust.  The good thing was that it kept the mosquitoes away.

The first cut finished on the smallest log.

Barbara is going to Kalispell to fill in for someone who's going on vacation where she worked before.  She'll be gone for ten days.  Susan riding in with her and taking her bicycle and spending some time visiting kids and grand kids.  The first step was to decide where she was going to camp so we got out the atlas and pinpointed a location.  This is near where we used to live in Columbia Falls.  I'm not getting more specific because I like to hunt elk there at times.  The first year we were married I spent an hour or so watching a herd of about 25 elk grazing in a clear cut.  I couldn't find any with antlers so finally decided to see how close I could get before being spotted.  I took my time and sneaked up to within 25 yards of them before a cow spotted me and raised the alarm.  Lesson learned?  Next time bring some antlers and glue!

Susan packed up and ready to go after being dropped off in Kalsipell.  She'll ride back up to Columbia Falls and camp for the night then to see one daughter in CF then back to Kalispell to another and spend the night there. 

She spent the night camped beside an elk trail.  She didn't know whether she'd be trampled by elk, visited by a grizzly bear or carried away (tent and all) by the mosquitoes.  Nothing happened though so she got up the next morning, had breakfast and headed for CF.  I've often wondered how many people have ever spent an entire night alone in the woods ... especially in grizzly country.  She's done it a lot. 

This is Hannah.  Looks like she's had a hard night taking care of her "baby."

Logan looks like he's ready for an adventure.

Now it's on to Kalispell.  She fought a hard headwind all the way in (about twenty miles or so).  On the way she passed a salvage yard we used to frequent.  I think they're making a statement about the amount of rain we've had recently.

This is Scott.  Today he's imitating two of the seven dwarfs.  Now he's Sleepy.

Now he's Happy ...

And back to Sleepy ...

And once gain he's ... Happy!

This guy is at his bachelor party.  No naked women popping out of cakes ... just the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air.  He had a bunch of his friends together and we burned up enough ammo to make a squad of Marines happy.  Most of the targets were around 300 yards away.  I was the only one with a "commie-gun."  My MAK-90 did okay though.  We had a bunch of clay pigeons on the mountain side at the far end of the range and I was hitting as many with my MAK-90 as they were with their AR's.  I put a solid scope mount on my rifle and it improved my accuracy a bunch.  I'm thinking about a trigger job for it next but as well as it did Saturday I'm not sure I need one.

Susan's been busy in the garden.  This is some of our broccoli she's getting ready to dehydrate.  Of course I ate about a fourth of it before it dried out.

... And mint on the drying racks ...

... then she picked enough Service Berries to make a pie ... which we ate last night.

These are the planks laying on the foundation blocks for Barbara and Victor's cabin.  They're a little bigger than they look from here and those things weigh a ton.  (Well, maybe not quite 2,000 lbs but they were heavy!)

Tristan wanted to do some fishing at Marl Lake so we loaded up the boat and kayak and went fishing.  Susan took a bunch of pictures trying to get one showing the lines in the air and took this one when Tristan and I were both casting.  It had a lot of glare in it but the "auto-smart fix" on my editing program took most of it out. 

The first catch of the day.  We've seen bass in this lake but don't often catch any.  This one hit like he was trying to rip the rod out of my hand.

Tristan caught a perch soon afterwards.

Susan took this picture to show all the little fish chasing her jig.  We have the best luck on this lake using white or orange "twister tails."  We've had perch, pike and bass hit them.

Susan dangling her feet in the water as she fished the lagoon.

Now were out in the main part of the lake.  The wind was blowing a bit which wouldn't normally have been a problem but today, when Tristan tossed the anchor over the first time the anchor disappeared in 40 feet of water and he was left holding the rope.  Either the rope broke or the knot came loose.  Either way no one volunteered to go diving for it so it's still on the bottom of the lake. 

The catch for the day.  Susan caught a perch just about the time we were ready to go home.  When we got home it was late so I filleted them and they're in the freezer awaiting the frying pan.  The mosquitoes were fierce so Victor kept fanning the air to blow them away while I filleted the fish.  We almost had to do it indoors.  Fortunately, it doesn't take long to fillet three fish.