8-31 July, 2013 - Busy!

We've been keeping kind of busy with both work and fun around here and I just haven't had time to put the blog together.

We floated down the Tobacco River from Eureka to Lake Koocanusa.  Susan is in front on a large float that's normally pulled behind a speed boat.

We took another afternoon to paddle around on Murphy Lake.  It's a nice mountain lake along Highway 93 about ten miles south of Eureka, Montana.  This is one of several beaver lodges in the lake.

Susan and Scott in their kayak.

Scott rides in the cockpit in front of Susan.  We bring along a blanket in case he gets sleepy.  He absolutely loves being in the kayak.

We spent one Saturday at the hot springs at Hot Springs, MT.  Scott in in the "cool" pool with his mom and dad.  They have three pools.  The upper two are smaller and very hot and hot.  Most people can only spend a bout 15 or 20 minutes max. in the upper pool.  The lowest (cool) pool is a full size swimming pool.  It's about the temperature of warn bath water. 

We stopped for a picnic lunch on Flathead Lake on the way home.

We hauled another load of junk to the dump.  Susan took a photo of the refrigerators behind the pickup.  She needs it for a book she's writing.

 

We spent another afternoon on Upper Stillwater Lake.  The train tracks run alongside the lake so we were treated to the sound of the trains every fifteen or twenty minutes.  Scott loves seeing trains so we always stopped and watched them go by.  Several engineers "tooted" the horns for Scott.

A neighbor has some ground squirrel problems...

They ate these clear to the ground.

I spent the first morning eliminating those I could with my 223 rifle.  That's me the arrow is pointing at.  I shot 19 times, killing 17 squirrels.

This is one of the little rodents.  There were many more I didn't get so we set some traps in key areas to get as many as we can.  Next spring I'll start shooting them earlier in the year before the grass gets too tall and before they have their litters. 

Ahhh ... the endless task of keeping weed-eaters, mowers and chainsaws going.  This one needed the carburetor cleaned.  We bought it at an auction for a dollar.  It's one that you can change the head on to make it do different functions.  We  ordered a brush cutting head for it so I needed to get it running.

Scott, being 2 3/4 now is getting a little more creative.  We made him a "playhouse" out of a large box.  He turned it on it's side so that he could stand and put his head through the window to watch television.  The Chipmunk (Alvin, Simon, and Theodore), movie is his favorite at the time so we've seen/heard it about a hundred times now.

He under the motorhome trying to corner the cat.

Susan picked a bunch of mint and hung it in bundles on the front porch.

I got my motorcycle out to get it running.  I knew Scott would want to sit on it so I tied it up to the Pickup to make sure it didn't fall on him.  I have the seat off to get at the battery (it needed charged).

I ran some jumper wires from the battery bank to the MC battery to charge it.

We ran the pump to water the garden.  The pressure as very poor so I took the suction-line apart to clean it.  It has a habit of collecting debris in the one-way valve near the pump.

Watering the garden requires hauling water. I've got seven, 50 gallon barrels in the back of the truck.  I've been filling them at a neighbor's then bring them home and siphon the water out of the barrels and into the main tank.  It takes 35 to 45 minutes for each barrel.

We finished up the porch.  It's great to have a place to relax where the mosquitoes can't get to us.

Harvest time for the raspberries ... finally!

This is the inside view of the screened porch.

We had a out-of-state friend stay with us for a week.  One of the things she wanted to do was take a canoe out on the lake so we spent a few hours on Marl Lake (a mile form home).  It's a nice quiet lake where you don't have to worry about getting run over by ski boats.  The deepest part of the lake is left of the island at the left side of the picture.  It's about 125 feet deep there.

She also wanted to go berry picking and we always take visitors up to the Mount Marston fire lookout.  These are some of the wildflowers on the way there.

It was a good place to let the dog run a bit.

Mount Marston Lookout.

In the distance you can see the peaks in Glacier National Park.

This is looking west from the parking lot.  There are about three lakes on the other side of the first ridge.  On a clear day you can see the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness area.

After the lookout we picked huckleberries for awhile.  Odie's taking a rest break next to Scott.

Scott needed a lift up the mountain.  He kicked off his boots near the road so I ended up carrying him when we moved to new areas.  We wore bright colored clothing to keep track of each other better.  The woods are thick here and it's easy to get separated.  We also carry FRS radios in case we get separated.

This is our friend coming back down the mountain.

One of Scott's favorite videos is about motorcycle riding.  He especially likes the freestyle events. It's hard to imagine what he's thinking but he was making some pretty serious motorcycle sounds!

Roofing ... ughhh!  We stripped off  the metal roofing and skylights.  We've been fighting leaks since we put on the metal roofing.  We figured it was more a problem with the skylights than the roof but the roofing had to come off to fix the skylights so we took it all off.  The skylights did end up being the main problem but we went back with asphalt roofing anyway.  We'll use the salvaged metal roofing on other projects.

 

I keep a file of photos of unique hinges and gate latches.  This one is an old horseshoe that latches the gate to a chicken pen.  A good example of using what you have on hand instead of buying something new that probably doesn't work as well.

June 15 through July 6, 2013 - Trip to Kansas

We took a quick trip to Kansas to spend some time with my mother and sister.  We've been planning it for awhile and thought we'd head out at the end of the week but some things happened and we moved it up a few days.  Still ...

There was laundry to be done before we left along with some other chores such as having the yard mowed and trimmed and ...

Changing the oil and filter on the Cherokee.  Here I'm using my "poor boy" automobile ramps.  I stacked some 2X6's then drove the front tires up on them.   That gave me enough room to change the oil and filter and grease the front end.

The trip there was long (1625 miles) and boring.  Here we've crossed into Kansas.  The wheat is ready to harvest and the wind seldom let up. 

The city had an open house for the city zoo. One station was set up by the fire department.  They had a hose rigged up and a house-fire to extinguish.  The "flames" were shutters that the kids aimed the water at to put out the "fire."  The smallest kids (like Scott) had an assist from a real fireman.

Then it was time to ride the kid's train.  In the seats in front of and behind Scott and Susan are my grand-nephews and niece. My mother is in the seat two rows behind Scott.

We went to three baseball games the kids were playing in.  Scott slept through the first two.

We went on a "Rails-to-Trails" ride one day.  This is in a little town that was hit hard by a tornado many years ago.  There are a few houses left along with the old school and a building that used to be the bank.  It still had the outside walls and the old bricked in safe with a steel door.  Naturally it was one of the hottest days so far and we were constantly watching for signs of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.  Plus, the trail veered off from our intended destination so it ended up being a lot farther than anticipated.  We stopped at a farmhouse to get more water before we reached our destination.

 

Two views of the bank.  The safe/vault is the brick structure in the back corner.

 

The wind blew some limbs down in my mother's back yard so we cut them up and stacked them for pick-up by the alley.  My mother set up the wading pool and slide for Scott to play in while we worked.  I used my stepfather's electric chainsaw to cut the limbs up.  I've never used one before.  It cut well but you really have to watch out for the cord.

One evening we went to Wal Mart.  Scott got into the shampoo bottle and smeared shampoo all over his head.  I took him to the bathroom where we washed it all out.  That took awhile since he had it smeared about a quarter-inch thick!  That same evening before bedtime he found a bottle of baby powder and tried to powder one of the cats in the basement.  He got more in himself than the cat and looked like a mime when we caught up with him!

Eventually we hit the road again to go to my sister's house in Colorado.  Scott is suited up for a long ride!  We spent a day there then headed home.  We made a side trip to see a friend who was camping at a lake in Wyoming.  We never did find him so we ended up spending the night in Casper at a motel.

We were weary of travel by now.  Scott had had about all the long-distance driving he wanted so we cut the day short and camped in a state park in Montana the last night on the road.  This is the first time we used this tent.  We bought it for a kayak trip we plan on going on at Lake Mead later this year.  We wanted something that could stand up to the wind there that kept shredding our other tents.  This one is undoubtedly the best tent we've ever owned.

We finally made it home on July 4th.  The grass was tall and the weeds had about overtaken the garden.  We'll have plenty to keep us busy for awhile.

There was a half-grown snowshoe rabbit along the road near our cabin.  He stopped long enough for me to take his picture.

We bought a set of kayak racks for the Cherokee.  They make life much simpler when transporting kayaks!  It would have been nice if the instructions for putting together the racks had been more detailed.  All they included was a very poor quality photo of the parts and assembled racks.

Susan picked up a barbecue grill cover to put over the wash tubs and wringer.  It's much easier than using a tarp and hopefully will last longer too!

The chickens had been busy while we were gone.  I had enough eggs in the laying boxes to fill a two-gallon bucket.  Unfortunately I have no way of telling which are good by looking at them.  The quick method is to put them in water to see if they float.  Those that do are discarded (none have failed the test so far).  Scott was helping wash them.  We still break each one into a cup just in case one is bad.

I needed to clean the chicken house and the easiest way to keep the chickens outside of the "house" is to scatter some feed in the enclosed run.

 That kept them busy outside while I (with Scott's help) cleaned out the inside.

I dumped the old straw on the garden in a section we're leaving fallow this year.  I'll till them in sometime later in the week.

The weeds did well while we were gone.  Susan is cleaning them out of this section while I hoed them in another section of the garden.

Scott was playing in the sand pile while we worked in the garden.  When I hooked up the pump to pump water from the main tank to the garden tanks he helped hold the hose.  He did well, (putting most of the water in the tanks), then when Susan went to pick him up he looked at her innocently and said, "I'm wet."  (A fact that was obvious!)  He also had a huge smile on his face.  There isn't much that he likes better than playing in the water.

I bought a CVA .50 Magnum, in-line muzzleloader at a yard sale in Kansas.  I couldn't get the breech plug out there but there was no sign of rust anywhere so I took a chance and purchased the gun.  He wanted $150.00 for the rifle and accessories (about $70.00 worth of bullets, primers, etc.).  I got him down to $100.00 before buying it.  I had to put the barrel in a vice and use a wrench on my screwdriver to get the breech plug out.  Mostly they had just over tightened the plug.  The barrel still had an obstruction though so I pushed it on out using the ramrod.

The obstruction looked like a couple of Pyrodex pellets that didn't fire.  It was early evening by then so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to shoot it.  The barrel is in pristine condition so I'm happy with my purchase. 

It's going to take us a few days to get caught up with the mowing and other projects neglected while we were gone.  At least we had plenty of rain and the grass is still green and the woods around the cabin are still wet.  The fire danger can get pretty high by this time of year.