Christmas decorations 2011

Christmas Decorations 2011

Our Christmas tree, an Alpine Fir cut on our own property. It's on our front porch to keep it safe from Grandkids and the cat in the house! There are a lot of lights on it, but the flash washed them out. I thought a picture at night would show up better than daytime, with the lights. Maybe I'll try taking a picture at dusk.


Decorations on top of the piano.

My Gingerbread village on top of a kitchen cabinet.

The shelf in the living room, usually filled with bears and fishing knick-knacks, now filled with Snowmen and other Christmas knick-knacks.

On top of the gun safe in the corner of the living room. The bear, moose, and birdhouse (in back) are always there, I just added Christmas stuff.

Scott wishes everyone a Merry Christmas!


For Marge... Barbara's cats helping her dust the shelves before she puts her books on them.

Pictures from Barbara, Sept. 2011

Boney tied in knots! I didn't think any cat could do a weirder pose than some of the ones our's has done! This one wins!

The 'new' door is in, and the window in the door brightens up the cabin. The roof is done but the last two scaffolding boards are still there so we can finish sealing the stove pipe flashing. Phone/internet connection comes in right around the corner from the door. First coat of paint on exterior walls.

Barbara started putting up the drywall in the sleeping loft.

They had a bathtub in the yard that Barbara was cleaning up for them to use in their cabin, and the cats were inspecting it. Barbara said they were batting at grass that was poking up through the drain hole! Boney is in the tub, Atton is the cat up on the edge.

Barbara finished the first coat of paint. Victor was digging post holes for building a woodshed.

Sept. pics from Steven's camera

Our first crop of Blackberries. We planted the bushes 2 years ago.

Me on the roof. I spread roofing tar around the skylights and the seam where the house roof and porch roof meet. It's hard to get good footing on the metal roofing, and the sun glared off it whenever I faced the other way. The tar works better than caulk, and when it rained Tuesday (9/27) the rain stayed on the outside! lol

This is me pulling my kayak upstream for the ride back down, on 9/10, Stillwater River. More pics way down below on another post.

The water on the lake was like glass that day. We joked about posting the picture this way and upside down and let people guess which one was right! Upside down it looks almost like it's evening but looks like it could be right!

Steven got a lot more fish in his picture during the Salmon run than I did. The orange things are Salmon.

Solar Panels and Farmer's Market

I rode my bicycle to the post office and back (round trip 14 miles), and on the way back up our road I stopped to take a picture of this dead tree with holes pecked into it by woodpeckers.

The cat guards the baby chicken! I bring the little chick inside at night, and take it outside during the day. We call it "Chicken Nugget", but the way it eats I think we should call it "Piglet"!

Steven put a temporary door in on Barbara and Victor's house. This one was in a frame, so he used it for now. Later he used shims to make the other door fit. The other door is nice because it has a latticed window. It'll let light into their cabin.

The windows are in, on the south side.

Now Steven turns attention to some of our projects up here by our house. He made 'scaffolding' on the back of our wood-cutting truck so he could work on our solar panel tower. He enlarged the frame to put on the 4 panels we bought two years ago. Those panels have been mounted on an old lawn swing frame in the garden and haven't been turnable, to track the sun.

He took off our two smaller watt panels (a 100-watt and a 65-watt) and put the four newer panels around the 3 older ones. He had to weld more framework for the top.

The panels are going back on! The 3 in the middle are 130-watt panels and the four outer panels are 135-watt, each.

Our car was broken down and we needed money for a car part. I loaded up some stuff to sell at the Farmer's market and rode 18 miles to Eureka.

My "booth". Krystina's brother spotted me there and he came and helped me set up, which was totally cool. I had raspberry plants in the box to the right, and on the table I had dried herbs, pot holders (which I made), some of the soap Barbara made, and dried huckleberries. All I sold was the dried huckleberries. I made $29. The car part was around $24, so I did okay. Gas for the car would have cost me $8 round trip to Eureka, but the car wasn't running. The wood-cutting truck would have cost $16 round trip to Eureka. We rarely leave home, and the gas prices are a big part of the reason! Good thing I like to ride my bicycle.

Kayaking on our anniversary, Tristan on 9/11

September 10th was our 9th anniversary. We decided to go kayaking.

We launched on the north end of Upper Stillwater Lake.

We started off paddling upstream but the current was way too fast, plus it was very rocky. We hiked upstream pulling the kayaks. It's one of the reasons we wear water shoes! After about a half mile we came to a waterfall that would have been too hard to get up around, not to mention impossible to kayak down. We'd have made it over the falls but wouldn't have survived the huge rocks at the bottom! It was only about an 8' fall.

So we made the wild ride back down to the lake. I wasn't able to take pictures because it took some fast steering going through the rocks. This is at the bottom of a tamer section, watching Steven come on down. The lake was about 50' behind me here.

We paddled around the lake, which is odd-shaped and has many sections. In a lagoon between a couple of sections of lake there is a huge beaver house. In the water, below and to the left of the beaver house, is a shadowy hole where the beavers come and go. It's probably a tunnel through sticks and it's silted over.

I followed Steven's wake across the lakes. When you get a good paddling rhythm going you can fly across the water.

We stopped to drift a while and the ripples died down. The lake was calm as glass.

One of these Heron or Crane thingys came flying in.

After it landed I got closer, then took a picture on telephoto.

The next day, on Sept. 11, Tristan and some of the fire department guys stood in front of the fire hall along the highway near Fortine to commemorate the tragedy at the World Trade Center 10 years ago.

Isaiah, Greg, Tristan, and Bill.

Salmon snaggin (9/15/11)

The kitten dreams of fish... Salmon, perhaps!

Lucky for the cat the Salmon were running, and 'snagging' opened today! This is the Tobacco River a the edge of Eureka. Steven and Victor are on the right bank, downstream.

Steven works on his technique. Snagging is different than regular fishing. You toss the snag hook out there and watch for a Salmon to swim between you and the snag hook. Then you jerk the line just right and (hopefully) grab one.

Steven caught the first one! He also caught the most... way more than Victor and I did! We all has several get away. Tristan came by after a while and I let him use my line. He snagged a Salmon right away and as he jerked it onto the shore the line broke. The fish was impaled with the snag hook and was drifting downstream while still trying to struggle upstream. I ran out into the water and chased him about 50' downstream and finally got a hold of him and carried him back up to the shore. It was tricky not snagging myself on the hooks, but I knew he would just die anyway, so I might as well try to get him.

Barbara took this picture of me fishing from the bridge. I soon moved down to the river bank because it was easier to land the fish. Barbara was helping with that. When Victor or I would snag a fish and yank it toward shore, she would pin it with her foot and grab it and throw it in our buckets. She didn't fish because she didn't have a license. Good thing the rest of us did... the game warden came around looking at everyone's licenses!

There are 3 fish in this picture. They're orange. There were groups of 50 or more clustered together but I never got in a good position to get a good picture without glare from the sky.

Some of our fish. We brought home 35 fish. Probably half that many more got away.

Steven showed Victor how to filet Salmon. After a while Victor did some of them too.

Barbara and I got out of that. We went inside to make dinner. She made towers out of my groceries while I made Hamburger Helper!

Kayaking, Stillwater River

We went kayaking again on the Stillwater river south of Stryker. We drove in on a State forest road and parked near the river just south of the Point Of Rocks restaurant along Hwy. 93.

The current is pretty lazy through here, so it was pretty easy to paddle upstream. The river winds through willow flats, twisting and turning. It's a haven for beaver, muskrat, and mink. We also seen tracks of deer, moose, and we saw bear scat on the bank in one place.

The scenery was pretty cool as we row, row rowed our boats gently up the stream!

There were a few beaver dams that had been breached by spring run-off. Most weren't hard to paddle up through but this one gave us a run for the money. It took each of us two tried to get through. The current was fast coming toward us and there was no room on either side to paddle. The branches of the dam were slick and hard to reach and get a hold of, to pull ourselves through.

On our second tries we hit it hard and fast and got far enough up into it that we could reach ahead with our paddles and force the kayaks up and over.

We paddled upstream for 3 hours. Here, the stream narrows with willows growing in on each side. The water was quite deep here, probably 8' or so. Up past here we landed our kayaks against a gravelly bank and had a snack/picnic lunch before turning around and floating back down the river.

Now we're on the way back down. Most of the time we just floated, using the paddle to steer as needed.

We stopped to fish in some of the deep pools on bends in the river.

Sometimes the sun was out and we felt warm. Sometimes the sun went behind clouds for several minutes and we got kind of chilly.

It was a fun float back down. It took 3 hours to get back to where we launched, what with stopping to fish and sometimes just enjoying drifting lazily on the current.

There was a low foot bridge behind Point Of Rocks restaurant.

Steven shows his skills at doing the limbo!

It's harder than it looks. Your concept of balance is changed when you're laying back like that in a tippy kayak.

Steven made it through and now it's my turn. It was easier going under it downstream than it was going under it while fighing our way upstream! The car was only about another half mile. We had been on the water for 6 hours and we were pretty chilled by the time we got out. We loaded up the kayaks, went home and had hot chocolate and dinner!