The ATV path is mostly finished at this point. The excavating is completed right out to the house. Nate has a lot of experience on the heavy equipment so it went very quickly. Rodney’s expertise is with the chain saw so he was cutting trees for the road. That was just a little harder physically than the excavating. ;) One day when they had rain Nate turned off the excavator and exclaimed, “You’re actually steaming!” I’m sure he was! Rodney had commented earlier that this job actually felt a bit like work. Nate again came back with a zinger, “Yeah, my wrists are getting tired.” It has been a very physically demanding week for Rodney but he’s loving it! He really does love to run the chain saw. For some odd reason the physical work isn’t as exhausting as his old job was.
Now they are digging out the foundation at the back of the house, the hole for the water system and trenches to bury lines. We tore the existing shed off the back of the house, exposing the original “pit” where the water came into the house. Scary! Earl has been out here working on the electrical system and he thought the pit looked “mean.” He wondered if it was like the pit the Biblical Joseph’s brothers tossed him into! Earl hardly ever comments negatively about anything so it MUST have been bad! It was very moldy too. I tried to help Rodney clear out some of the last of it but it was too moldy for me to do much. I carried away some of the timbers and even that was probably too much. I’m feeling a bit cruddy today and just now as I type this realize that it is possibly from moving that moldy wood.
I have, up until now, felt absolutely fantastic! There were parts that I had never even realized were not working right that suddenly feel better. So this is “normal!!!” It feels GREAT! As Rodney has noted though, I tend to overdo it when I feel good resulting in aches and pains the next few days. That isn’t all bad though. I can catch up on this blog and work on letters when I’m not trying to do too much! I still don’t have those letters in the mail yet! I needed to get stamps for them and then once I got the stamps we were in the middle of moving and settling in! I should be starting to get them in the mail this coming week though so if I have your address, you’ll likely get one. Eventually! Don’t hold your breath! I’m not that quick!
We’re really enjoying living here! It is so beautiful I feel like I need to pinch myself and make sure it is real that we can live in a dream home in a dream location! I have so many pictures that I can’t wait to share! Many of them are of the same view, just at different times, different days… I’ve not been interested in morning in recent years but with feeling better, plus the sunrises coming a bit later, I’m REALLY enjoying seeing the sun come up here! I also got a SPECTACULAR picture of the full moon as the sun was coming up over the mountains with the mountains somewhat shadowed over the horizon. Awesome!!!
The wildlife is so amazing too! We had a pair of trumpeter swans on the lake about a week ago. I got a few pictures of them but further away than the swans I got a few weeks ago on the other lake. They were so beautiful, but much more reclusive than the other swans. I’m pretty sure our Loon baby was finally able to fly away. I haven’t seen him in about a week. I was so sad when mom and dad left and he was still here but he seems to have made it out! The coyotes were yipping and howling nearby the other day but we didn’t see them. They scared the pants off Oksana when Sergei called them in on their walk in to school one day! She HATES that walk! We’ll see if we can’t get them some sort of vehicle to drive in.
Rodney and Nate plan to go check out some sort of mini truck to drive that trail. I think they use them a lot in Japan as a truck, but they are too small for us to use on the road here. Nate picked up an ATV for Sergei to use this summer when he’s working maintenance. Sergei is in heaven!!! Nate already gave him a Leatherman and promised him a radio too! Sergei practically worships the ground Nate walks on at this point! It is more than a little challenging to drive the boat at night with no light so it will be nice to have another option.
We were able to talk to the guy that built this place and he says they would drive the boat right through the ice in winter until it got too thick to smash through. By then you could walk or skate over it, or drive a snow machine quickly! He says they never hiked in. The cabin has been here a lot longer than we realized. He built “the shack in the back” in a couple of months after his first cabin burned down. Then they spent 5 years living in that while they built this cabin. This cabin was finished 25 years ago! Amazing! We’re looking forward to having them out for dinner sometime to see pictures of the building process. He and his wife are very nice people and fascinating! He’s offered to teach Rodney how to weld aluminum so that Rodney can make his own aluminum boat! His wife is a rather talented painter. I can easily see how she got much of her inspiration!
I hung the bird feeder on the front porch and we’ve had chickadees out there almost constantly. They are such cheerful little busy birds! We also saw a grey jay yesterday which was kind of fun to see. It is so much fun to see the different variety of birds here as opposed to those we saw in NY!
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