17-25 June, 2012 - Camping, fishing, horses, kayaks and bicycle rides. (Part one of two.)

Happy Father's Day!

I have dozens of pictures to post so this is going to be a two part blog this week. We left for our camping spot on Sunday, the 17th  after I finished bolting in the wood stove.  The weather was threatening rain and we stilll needed fill water jugs and check the mail on the way out. 

My pictures are not all in order here.  My camera has developed alzheimers and sometimes forgets what time and day a picture was taken.  Usually I'm in a hurry so I just punch in "1" for the day, year, month, etc. just to get things moving (Otherwise, it asks before every picture if I want to set the day, month, etc.).  I believe this was taken on Monday, the 18th.  We needed to go to Whitefish and get on the internet because of some articles of mine that magazines had accepted so that I could answer some of their questions.  On the way back, Scott fell asleep "reading" his book.  (His grandpa sometimes does that too.)

This is the creek where we camped. (Dog Creek)

This is taken from our campsite.  The "lake" is not really a lake.  It's more like a wide spot in the creek.

But it's still home to a few beaver and muskrats as well as turtles and fish.  Here a beaver munches on his breakfast while sitting on a floating log.  The lense is on maximum telephoto shot freehand hence the blurry image.

A beaver house?  I never saw a beaver enter but I did see several muskrats using it.

This is a muskrat scent mound or feeding station.  I'm not sure which.  (Or maybe it's both!)

Another one ...

We stopped for a frozen pizza to have for supper on Sunday evening.  No assembly required but you do have to cook it. 

We had several days of heavy rain both before and after we showed up so one of the first things I did was set up a tarp.  The only one we had was an 8X10 we'd purchased at a Walmart in Nevada.   I used bungee cords and ratchet straps for tie-downs.

Home-Sweet-Home for the next week.  There was broken glass everywhere so Susan spent some time policing the area.

It was cold and damp.  The wood stove in the camper felt really good!

I used our "clothesline" rope setting up the tarp so I furnished some paracord for the clothes line.

We rode bicycles above the camp and took this photo of the dam from a rock outcropping above it.  If you have the full size photo and enlarge it you can see a corner of the truck in the trees in the upper, left corner.

One of the first things Scott did was probe a gopher hole.  It's was probably good for him that Mr. Gopher wasn't home.

Scott was a typical 19 month-old.  Here he lost his balance and sat in the mud while playing in the water with a stick.  Grandma wasn't pleased about the extra laundry!

We went on several bicycle rides during the week.  On this one we ended up above the Stillwater River.

I was standing on a bluff overlooking the river.  This is the view to the south.  The river is high and murky with spring run-off.  It's normally crystal clear.

This is looking north.

This is looking up at Susan and Scott.

This is looking down from where Susan and Scott were in the prevous photo.  I'm probably about 150 feet above the river at the edge of the bluff.  It goes straight down over the edge.  Anyone for some cliff diving?

Some of the wildflowers along the road.

These were down on the bluff where I was standing.

It's hard to tell on the photos but there are four distinct colorations.  The blue ones had different colors at the  base of the petals.  The photos didn't come out well due to the wind blowing the flowers around.  

Odie helping me take more pictures.

... of more flowers

These were my favorites

I picked a few for grandma but Scott took them before I got to Susan.

When we got back from our ride, Scott was aslep in his bike seat so we brought him in, seat and all and put him on the floor for his nap.

14-16 June, 2012 - Chimney installation, garden planting, shooting ...

Been a busy three days. I finally got all the articles finished that were due.  I need to send out some more queries.  I've been holding off a little until I see how much time I'm going to have to give to the book editing.  We had two nice days since my last post so we finally got a few things done outside.

Susan painted the little stove we're putting in the U-Haul.

We carried it into the camper and set it where we thought it should go.  We then measured where to cut the hole for the chimney.  Then I moved the stove over and began cutting.  I broke the end of the blade off of a metal cutting blade on the jig saw so that it wouldn't cut too deep and go through the roof. I had to move the hole over and forward about an inch compared to where I wanted it in order to clear some attaching hardware.

Once it was marked I drilled a hole through the roof then cut out the opening for the chimney using the jig saw.  In this photo I'm anchoring the chimney and brackets to the roof of the camper.

This photo should have been ahead of the previous one.  I have the roof support kit up with me and I'm getting ready to attach the brackets.

When the roof support kit was in and firmly anchored I moved the stove back into position and installed the four in. pipe in the stove's vent.  I ran the pipe through the metalbestos pipe and out the roof.  I attached the four inch pipe to the metalbestos chimney using pipe hangers and steel pop rivets.

Now I need to put a cover over the hole in the roof!  This is a piece of sheet metal for some kind of ventilation system.  We found it in the dump and brought it home to keep until we had a use for it.  I'm going to use part of it for the chimney cover.  The dog has to check it out of course.

I cut the top off to use as a cover then cut a hole through where the four inch chimney will pass through.  I trimmed off the tabs until they were about an inch long.  Then I shoved it onto the four inch pipe and down over the metalbestos roof support/chimney pipe.

I did some cutting and bending and pop riveting until I had it anchored to the roof.  We planned on using roofing tar to seal the edges but we can't find it at the moment.  (We got into a discussion once trying to decide whether we actually "had" something if, even though we'd seen it recently, we couldn't find it!)  I had a roll of aluminum tape so I used it to cover the edges and hopefully seal them against rain/snow.  As I write this it's 11:30 pm and pouring rain so we'll know in the morning if it's watertight.  The tin can over the four inch pipe is to keep rain and dust out when we travel.

The stove in place!  I still need to anchor the legs to the floor but I can do that tomorrow.

Scott went shopping in my room and found one of my old cameras in it's case.  He grabbed it and took off running in case I wanted to take it away from him.  He carried it around all day yesterday.

We actually had a couple of semi-dry days where we could get more planted in the garden.  Susan is putting in corn.  We covered the ground with plastic about a week ago.  That helps the ground heat up.  Corn especially, likes warm soil.

I planted more potatoes.  I use the Garden Way walk-behind seed planter to mark the rows.

Then I take a bucket of seed potatoes and go down the row with a trowel.  I dig a quick hole, drop in a spud section then do it all over again.  With a little practice you can go pretty quick.  Some people cut their seed potatoes a few days in advance to let the cut parts seal up a bit.  I've tried it and it didn't work any better than the way I do it and my way takes less time.  I just cut the potato in quarters at the time I plant them.

Susan using the hand trimmers around the water tank. 

I ran out of space in tilled ground so scattered a thin layer of straw int he ground.  Then I tossed in some seed potatoes and covered it all with another bale of straw.  I grew them this way in Kansas but haven't tried it in MT yet.  Our growing season is so much shorter here that I'm not sure it will work.  We'll see!

The baby chickens are growing fast.  They have pin feathers on their wings now.  These two were getting a drink when I snapped this picture.

Stephen and Emily came up and Stephen brought a box of clay targets and four boxes of shotgun shells.  We helped him shoot them all up!

They also brought some hamburgers for an early Father's day feast!  This is my favorite food.

Scott was making his rounds this afternoon and stumbled across this unique little chair.  The previous owners of the property cut it out of a log using a shain saw.  I think Scott has claimed it for his own now though!

8-13 June, 2012 - Stove making, article writing and long bicycle rides

... and more rainy days.

The rain made it good for writing.  There's a new Prepper's magazine coming out soon.  It's a print magazine that's free for now as part of it's promotional phase.  You can read a little about it at
https://www.preppersmagazine.com/.

I'll have at least one article in it's first issue (possibly two).  Anyway, I wrote one article for them and will be finishing up another in the next couple of days. 

I also got a very nice letter from another magazine editor about an article I sent them.  He told me that by making a couple of changes he could pay about $100.00 more for the article.  I made the changes and he emailed me this afternoon accepting the article.  It's a fairly major outdoor magazine that has published a couple other articles of mine in the past.  I'll tell you which magazine when the article is published.

And I had an email from my book editor too.  He's going to start organizing it into it's final form and had some questions and instructions.  It's slated for printing this fall. This is all new territory for me.  I've had quite a few magazine articles published but this will be my first book.  I was surprised to learn that he's read my blog here.

Between all the rain, writing and running to Eureka I haven't accomplished much outside.  My potatoes all got frost bit and had to start over again.  They're coming back up though.  The peas are doing great as are the onions and garlic.  We haven't planted carrots yet but the volunteer carrots are coming up and looking good.  We still have plenty of things to plant but the ground it soaked.  We're hoping to get more in now that the ground is drying up a little.

The hen with her three little ones is still in the chicken house while the other three hens are in the dog kennel.  The rooster is no more.  He met up with a .177 cal. pellet around 5:30 am one morning after crowing at the top of his lungs on the front porch.  That was really bad judgment on his part.

The chicks are beginning to grow their real feathers now.  When they get a little bigger I'll put them in the kennel and let the hens have the chicken house back.  Right now the little ones could get through the chain link fence on the kennel and then the cat would eat them.

Scott learned that he could look in the hen house and watch the little chicks through the small door.  Now it's one of his favorite pasttimes when he's outside.  The problem is that he doesn't shut the door when he leaves.  Today one of the other hens got in while Scott was gone and a fight ensued between momma hen and the other chicken.  I heard the ruckus and opened the large door and almost got bowled over by the escaping hen.

Scott's turn to help do the dishes.  Of course he invited a few of his friends to play in the rinse water.  (I thought ducks could swim better than that.)

We finally got a nice day and decided to head for Eureka on bicycles.  Scott really likes my water bottle and once he gets it he wants to keep it.  We finally talked him out of it and we got to riding again. 

We stopped at the playground and had a couple of burritos and root beer for lunch while Scott played. For some reason he got a kick out of doing a roll-over at the bottom of the slide.  It was all controlled and he did it several times.

While we were there some city employees came and cut down the lion carving in the park.  It was rotten inside and a hazard to those in the playground.

It looked pretty ugly toward home when we left Eureka so we took the old highway back instead of the new highway.  We missed the heavy rain which was good but the hills are tougher so we got a heavy workout coming home.  We'd parked on the paved road which shaved 6 miles off our ride.  We still covered around 34 miles round trip.  Scott did very well on the ride.  When we got back to the car he put on his "professor" reading glasses and began reading one of his books.  We tied the bikes on and drove home on our dirt road.

The pine trees are pollinating now which leaves a yellow ring around puddles and standing water.  The pollen is oily and sticks to whatever it contacts.  Fortunately it hasn't affected my allergies too much yet.

Scott decided to take a break from playing in the sand to sit next to grandpa.

My project of the week is to make a heating stove for the camper.  This is the first model.  I used a 20 pound propane bottle for the stove (an idea I got from an article in Backwoodsman magazine).  The first problem was that the stove pipe was too small and causing a back draft.  I'd used three inch pipe but needed to go to four inch.  The second problem was that I'd put the air inlet under the door and it was too low.  Ashes and coals kept falling out of it.

While it was getting it's initiation we pulled up our folding chairs and had some family time.  It probably made a good red-neck scene.  All of us sitting around the stove in the yard.

One more trip to Eureka to buy four inch pipe.  The outlet on the stove is steel water pipe I purchased at Koocanusa Plumbing in Eureka.  I also got a four foot section of stove pipe from them.

I welded the old air inlet shut and cut a new one in the door.  I had to do some cutting and welding on the steel pipe to get the right angle but it works great.  The stove is a little slow to get going but once the fire's lit if puts out a lot of heat.  It should do a good job once it's inside the camper.  We finished burning off paint this evening and will paint the stove with high-temperature stove paint tomorrow.