Going off the Grid

I read a post on Facebook yesterday where a friend of mine vented about extra charges being added to her utilities bill specifically earmarked to help the government pay for some of it's excesses, and without any prior notice or opportunity to vote. This little detail was probably tucked in with some other excess that succeeded in clawing it's way through the voting system and was strategically never mentioned. Personally, I'd be tempted to take an ax to that nice little ticking time-bomb attached to the side of my house. Of course, you can't do that if you don't own the house. You could get sued.

However, it got me thinking. Just how hard is it to go off the grid? I really don't know. Prior to moving out here, the 'grid' was a given, one of those things taken for granted and never thought of until the electricity went out in some storm. All you can do is hunker down, shed a tear for the contents of the freezer, and wait for the company to fix the problem.

That's the way I thought until this happened a short time after I married my husband. We lived in a trailer park in an aging trailer and there was a mean snow-storm going on outside. When we lost power, my husband dug out a small generator and an extension cord, and wallah, we endured the outage while watching TV. We also had a lamp plugged in so, in the whole trailer park, we were the only one lit up. I was so proud of my smart husband. Who knew such a thing could be so easy?

I know now that hooking your house up to a private generator can be dangerous too, especially for the nice man who comes around to check your usage or for someone else down the line who might be working on the reason for the outage itself, but the generator wasn't hooked into the house power so they were all safe. I also now know that there are special breakers you can install that will allow you to use your own generator to run your whole house. Though that idea was very tempting, I never really thought much about 'going off the grid' even like that. When we moved out here, we moved far beyond city electricity and water, and having a little generator and using the outhouse or a pitcher-pump for water was just another part of the adventure.

Consider for a moment how all these power companies got their start. Someone figured out how to generate electricity (I don't know how, so don't ask), and they discovered that it was really easy to generate more than enough for a single house. In fact it's pretty darn easy to generate enough for several houses, you just need a big enough generator and there are many available to buy. And if you decide to go this route, and your neighbors decide to complain about the noise, all you have to do is offer to share.

Let's say, with your house as the center, you have 8 immediate neighbors - 3 across the street in front of you, 3 across the alley behind you and one on either side of you. You buy a 12KW or bigger diesel generator and put it in your garage. If each of those neighbors buys you five gallons of diesel or pays you the equivalent, you are likely to come out ahead in the first week. Don't take my math as a for-sure because I don't know the numbers when it comes to running a 12KW, but I'm not far off. That 'extra' could and should go into generator maintenance and oil, and anything else that might be necessary, I'm not a mechanic and I know even less about maintaining a generator, diesel or otherwise.

So, go to the gas station and look at the price of five gallons of diesel. Consider that it might last you a week, and then look at your electric bill (divided by 4, since it's for a month), which is cheaper? Without doing the math myself, I think buying diesel once a week is tons cheaper. I think having a noisy generator in your garage is a small price to pay, and I think that noisy generator would pay for itself in no time. Noise can always be muffled by soundproofing, and you get used to it to the point that you don't notice it until it's off for the night or for an oil change.

So tell me, how hard is it really, to go off the grid? Will the company sue you for not using their service? Will they try to bring some other pressure to bear? Likely, but can they really force you to hook up to city electricity? Now water you may just have to take - the plumbing is already there and it's not as if you all want to haul gallons and gallons of water every day just so you can wash your clothes or dishes.

The Value of Things

This morning, a friend of mine, Desmond Campbell, from Facebook, made a comment about why some people are always broke and will always be broke. His reasons were:
1)Not willing to learn something new
2)Will do it next year when the time is right
3)Laziness
4)Oh everyone is doing that
5)Spends beyond means on credit and blows their cash
6)The need to satisfy with objects to make themselves feel better at that moment
7)Does not! Research a market before doing!

All valid reasons, but that's not the subject of my blog. It was merely the spark that ignited this post. Value of things is what I want to talk about today. Ever since we moved out here, we have lived on an income that our most generous country considers to be below the poverty level. That leaves me wondering what they base their numbers on. There are people in town making more than we do and they need food stamps, state aid and housing assistance to make ends meet. What do they spend their wages on? It totally baffles me, the value people put on the things they think they need.

My life style is very different than those living in any town you can name, even small country towns, but in many ways it's still the same. We watch TV - we have HUNDREDS of movies. We eat, buy clothes, drive to work every day - well every day during the summer. We own our property and pay property taxes. The difference comes around when we are spending my hard earned wages. The cash we make during the summer has to supply us for the whole year.

What do you buy during the course of a year? We go through about a barrel of gasoline a month. A barrel of diesel will probably last us about two months, but we don't run the diesel generator during the winter. Food, I usually order through work and that eats up three quarters of my income.

For the rest - Do you need to have electrical power after you go to bed? Really? How much would you save on your electric bill if you could throw a breaker and turn your house off at night or when you were away on vacation, or even when no one was at home during the day, say when everyone was at school or at work. How many watt hours does that leave? five? seven? eight even? I suppose you need a couple in the morning, so ten watt hours? twelve? You say, "what about the refrigerator? What about the Freezer?" Believe me, they do just fine if the door isn't fanning.

Now clothes might be the biggest difference. You need clothes appropriate for your work and kids grow up. Living out here, I'm not running any fashion contest so sweat pants and a t-shirt are the attire of the day any day, and my kids are grown and can buy their own clothes now. I buy a few new things each time I go to town but nothing much more than new underclothes or long underwear. This year I plan to look for a dress. I'm looking for denim (I know, you don't need to tell me) and I want it long. I like long dresses - I always have. You know, now that I think about it, maybe I'll buy the material and a pattern. I have my sewing machine out here now. But I need to get to my point. Do you need to buy new clothes every time you pass a clothing store? Do you need to buy new clothes more than once a year? Do you need to buy NEW clothes every time?

What else do you buy? In an effort to save money, I go out of my way to make sure I don't have many monthly bills. I know you have an electric bill, but that would equal part of my gas expense. Many of you pay rent - well, sorry about that. So buy a house. Buy a trailer. Heck, buy an RV. Whatever, make your monthly payments purchase something permanent for you and your family, don't make it purchase something for someone else. I know - easier said than done.

What else do you pay for each month? We all have a phone, right? Me too - don't count the fact that my phone hasn't worked for the last two months - something I'm going to discuss with the phone company as soon as I can call them.

The worst and most useless expense in my opinion is cable TV. What's wrong with regular TV? Really? Do you really need a thousand channels? Buy a DVD. Sports, you say? I'm not a fan. Sorry, so I don't know what to tell you there. Cartoons? Have you watched any lately? Are they funny? Really? I haven't seen a funny cartoon in YEARS. And now paying a monthly internet bill is all the rage. grrrr

Enough of my rant about how you spend your dollars. How you do so is totally your business. This is just my way of trying to make you think about the value of these material things.

The biggest thing that makes me carefully consider what I buy, other than my limited income, is physically getting it here - even going shopping in the first place is something I need to consider. For you to go shopping, all you need to do is hop in your car and drive to the nearest mall. Ah the temptation of it all. For me to go shopping, I need to book a bush plane - $400+ out of my shopping budget right there just going to town. Then there's the taxi I need to take to the mall. Heaven forbid I need to make more than one stop, but of course I always do. If you spent $400+ to go to town and another $400+ to go back home, tell me you wouldn't go to every store you had to. So, since all that shopping takes a while, there's the overnight stay at a motel. Oh and also, if you're going to spend that much money, you should try to fill the plane for the return trip. What are you going to fill that plane with? The absolute necessities. ABSOLUTE necessities. No frills. The only luxury we generally allow ourselves is a stack of movies, maybe some ice cream, small things that don't take up much room. No cases of sodas. No fancy clothes. No bags of chips or sugary cereals. And the biggest no no - nothing that plugs in.

So tell me - what do you value? What is it about the things in your life that you can't possibly do without? Please, let me look into your corner of the world.

Turkey Bomb

I was reminded yesterday of what has to be the funniest thing that happens around here. For years, a friend of ours would fly around a few days before Thanksgiving, dropping off frozen turkeys to many of us who might not have been able to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner. I never knew who all he delivered to, but ever since we moved here, going somewhere before Thanksgiving was impossible for one reason or another.

Now, you may say, "What's so remarkable about a turkey delivery?" Other than the generosity of it all, that is. Well, as I said, he flew around dropping off frozen turkeys. Sorry about doing one of the biggest writerly faux pas by repeating myself, but this is significant. You see he didn't land to hand us the turkey, he dropped it out of the window as he flew over. I don't care how much snow is on the ground, a 25 pound turkey will punch right through it.

It was during these once yearly deliveries that our dog learned to search out these turkey bombs and from there she learned to watch the planes that buzzed us, waiting anxiously for whatever may come down so she could chase it and happily bring it back. She's never been able to manage a turkey bomb though, but she sure was instrumental in finding them. Bob would wrap each turkey in a large black garbage bag and tie a long red ribbon to it, but even with these obvious markers, after going through upwards of five feet of snow, there's not much left visible. More than once I've needed to strap on snowshoes and hike around looking for this illusive little hole in the snow.

Though he didn't call in advance, he did buzz over first, so we could get out in the yard to spot where the turkey landed. There would have been no finding it otherwise.

For those of you who don't know anything about snowshoes, walking in them is only part of the fun. Bringing a turkey up from under four to five feet of snow is like standing on the table and picking up a 25 pound something off the floor directly under your feet, knowing that if you got down on your hands and knees, standing again might be really very interesting if not impossible. Snowshoes will hold you up on that snow but your hands and knees won't. Do that and you're instantly too feet closer to the floor/ground and your feet are now up over your back. -> don't cheat, you can't back up so your knees are on the table. If you take your snowshoes off so you can kneel on them - well that's an option, but putting them back on in deep snow is another one of those interesting things about snowshoes.

Okay, now you've got your hands on this garbage bag with it's 25 pound weight, now you have to get yourself and your find back up on top of your snowshoes or back on your feet up there on the table. Just how flexible are you? Just how acrobatic are you? Now remember, you've just created a big hole in front of you getting that turkey up from the ground, so there's no such thing as stepping forward - do that and you stand a very good chance of doing a ballet on the toes of your snowshoes - probably only one of them - and if you're as good at ballet as I am, you'll join me face first in the snow. Fortunately, though I am nearly 200 pounds, I have always been very flexible - it helps.

The last couple years Bob hasn't been well enough to do all that flying so the turkeys were all delivered to some central location and phone calls went out to tell us all where to pick them up. As I've said before, going somewhere before Thanksgiving has almost always been impossible, and this year I don't even have a phone - it died. That's okay though; 25 pounds of turkey is a bit much for just the two of us. There's only so much you can do with all that meat before you get really tired of turkey.

Miscalculation

As some of my Facebook friends already know, I made a miscalculation on how much gas we would need to get us through freeze-up. Normally, I bring home pretty much as much fuel as I can throughout the summer - ordering one or two barrels every time the barge comes to Riversong. This year we planned to go to Eagle River for much of the winter and I didn't want a bunch of fuel left here unattended; we are well off the river and out of sight, but why tempt fate if I didn't have to? When we went to Fairbanks to get my book published, we came back to our diesel fuel having gone all milky, and diesel, as far as I know, doesn't go bad in a few months. I'm still using that fuel in lamps and such.

Where I wanted only enough to get us through until we left, thinking we'd order more sometime during the winter, my husband had different thoughts. He wants enough here to also get us through break-up next spring - a commendable thought, but he could have said something. You see, we discovered that it's cheaper to have our fuel flown in in the winter than it is to get it off the barge. It's tons easier to manage too. Like everything else done in the winter, load the sled with eight or ten gas cans and away to the house we go. In the summer it's pump the gas out of the boat into another barrel and then tip that barrel on its side and roll it to somewhere off the immediate bank; standing it up again is a two-man job, especially for us old folks. Then it can be hauled to the house about four to six cans at a time provided the four-wheeler doesn't have any flat tires (our latest obstacle).

Now granted, we leave some gas down by the boats because of the boats, and sometimes we leave all of it there and only bring it up to the house as needed, but it still needs to be moved around multiple times in the summer. If we had enough barrels, I'd buy all our fuel in the winter. I'm going to be doing the math for that this year. I'd much rather get all our fuel in here in one fell shot and be done with worrying about it.

So, as it stands, we're down to less than a barrel of diesel, which is plenty, and less than a five gallon can of gas, which is the biggest problem. The miscalculation came about because of our newest toy - the internet. Where before, one tank of gas in our little generator was enough to fuel our entertainment devices and the battery charger, now, with the addition of a modem and a router to our power drain, the little generator barely breaks even with a little to spare for the charger with a tank and a half or even two tanks, depending on how late my husband stays up. He loves to play WoW and it seems the best connection is well after midnight. Me, I'm solar powered, and I run out of energy shortly after the sun goes down most nights. I last longer if I take a nap during the day.

The last couple of days, it has been hovering around zero Fahrenheit, and since our diesel generator is kinda old, it doesn't have a glow-plug. For those of you who don't know, a glow-plug heats up the cylinder making the explosion of the diesel more efficient and thus the motor starts easier. Once was the time we had a blower heater to heat the monster, but the igniter on that thing went belly-up. Getting a new heater is on the list (you should see my list. Some things have been on my list for years.) Now we are reduced to using a small propane heater. It's very small, and though it works, it barely competes with the cold temperatures.

So, since we're so short on fuel, our computers and the internet goes off for the bulk of the afternoon. What do we do with ourselves? you ask. I get that question a lot with no thought of the fuel it takes to keep us entertained. Lately we've managed to get mostly caught up on the Smallville episodes, now we just need season nine to be up to date. Yesterday, we just started watching Dark Angel. Do any of you remember that one? And when we wade through that one, maybe I'll get Don to listen to my Harry Potter books again, I have all of them. Eh, we'll see. I invested hundreds of dollars up in Fairbanks Barns & Nobel book store on audio books and we haven't listened to half of them. Maybe it'll be Dune. Any votes. Well, time to turn things off. Talk to you all later.

Going for a Walk

Today, I walked down to the boats for the first time since it snowed the first couple inches. I suppose the snow is about a foot or so deep now but I managed to chisel my husband out of the house to pack trails a few days ago, so I had a packed trail to walk on. I needed to go down and get the last of the gas out of the big boat's tanks - yeah, we're almost out.

Walking is my time for thinking, and since today was blog day, that's what I was thinking about. Where did my thoughts go? Winter of course. I love winter as any of you who have read my previous posts surely have guessed. Winter is quiet. Winter is clean and white, though by no means sterile.

Along the way I saw mouse tracks, I saw where a squirrel had crossed the trail definitely more than once as he jumped down from one tree, ran across the trail and up another tree, and then back, maybe three or four times. And I saw moose tracks.

Though life has become easier for me, life for them likely has not. The squirrel screwed up and put his stash in a tree he didn't live in, or maybe it was his intention, but did he forget that the trail is there? He couldn't have; it is where it has always been ever since we've moved here.

Maybe the mouse's life has become easier though. He no longer has to worry so much about aerial predators though Gizmo still dives after where she thinks they might be.

The moose, though, is different from them all. No food stores. No cozy hidy-hole. No comforting, if cold, buffer from the outside world. Moose need to keep moving, to keep eating. I thought to compare them to the buffalo who are also designed by nature to handle deep snow. In contrast though, where the buffalo was made to shove through the snow with powerful shoulders, the moose was designed with long legs, maybe some shoving still gets done but mostly they are designed to 'part the way' or step over it.

Life is really hard for moose babies. They are born small when compared to their mothers. Really short from chest to butt and yet oddly long from shoulder to ground. This thought reminded me of a Shetland pony colt born to the pony my dad got me for Christmas when I was a kid. It was such a tiny thing; I simply had to measure it. Amazingly enough that little guy was exactly two foot square - from chest to butt and from shoulder to ground - two feet each way. I will never forget that. A baby moose isn't much bigger really. Maybe a few inches longer in the body, and maybe twice that in length. They grow fast during that first summer, but come winter, they must be able to keep up with momma. And momma? Well momma doesn't always take the easiest route just because she has a little one around.

When the snow gets deep, moose trails can be found most anywhere. They are quite stubborn creatures, taking little thought as to where they are going or the best way to get there. Line of sight will do. This way. That way. This bush or that. Across the river, fine - away they go, frozen, not frozen, it doesn't seem to matter. When the snow gets really deep, chest deep on an adult moose, they will start to hang to snowmachine trails - they aren't entirely stupid - and late in winter, they will contest their rights to the trail if pushed too hard.

This winter, I'll be missing much of that. I like the wildlife. Sometimes I see an otter playing in the snow as he travels from wherever to wherever. Occasionally I see a coyote, but Gizmo doesn't allow them to get close, plus I think they avoid the place because of her, and perhaps our, scents and sounds.

Ravens are the funniest of my winter guests. Once was the time one particular raven would come and play with our dog, but Gizmo doesn't play well, so he doesn't come by so much anymore. Haha - that's a funny story. Remind me to tell you about it in my next post.

See ya then.

Ack - I just thought of another one. Remind me to tell you about the otter that decided to stay under the house for a few days.

The Sound of - - - - Break-up

I bet you thought I was going to say 'music'. Well, keep that in mind, break-up is rather musical.

My sister sent a message to much of the rest of my family, telling them of my post about when my brothers came up here to visit. One thing she said was that, to me, my life seems mundane, even boring. Though not boring, to me my life is mundane. This is my life. These kinds of things happen all the time - sort of. That said, I love my life, and if your questions can prompt me to examine some part of my life in such a way that can allow you to share the experience, then I'm thrilled. In reply to that email, which included me this time, my brother wanted to know what breakup sounded like. So let's see if I can make you hear with words.

I've been hashing this over in my head for hours and the best word I can come up with is 'Pow'. That's Pow with a lot of emphasis on 'P', and the 'ow' rather foreshortened. Say it in your head with lots of 'P' and the 'ow' really short and you have most of the sound. Now, the next step is to imagine that sound coming from a drum, and that drum is in a large empty room - think echos and acoustics. Yeah, I'm getting into music.

With all that in mind, I need to talk a little about the ice. The river is a pretty big river I guess. Having grown up in the Great American Desert, my experience with rivers is rather limited, however, The Yentna is probably about as wide as your eight-lane highway and that's including the meridian in the middle. And as rivers go, there's a give and take on that width.

As we all know, ice expands as it freezes, and as rivers go, as ice freezes the water that's creating it is also going down - running away faster than it's freezing and faster than new spring water can feed it. However, the water doesn't run away too fast, else the ice would be left high and quite dry and very dangerous. During the course of freeze-up, as the ice builds in mass, it follows the dictates of gravity and eventually sags. If it sags enough, water is pushed up through cracks, if there are any, and around the edges. This water pools on the top of the ice and freezes, creating yet another layer of ice. This happens to some extent every time the temperature warms up. Warm temperature somewhere means some snow melted somewhere upriver which puts more water under the ice, but now that the ice is thick and heavy, the water has nowhere to go but on top. More ice is added on the bottom too during the coldest days. Ultimately, during the course of the winter, upwards of three feet of ice has accumulated. There's more some places and less some places but three feet is a good average.

Needless to say, three feet of ice is a lot of ice, and it takes quite a bit of force to break it, and it is exerting that force on itself all the time. That volume of ice trying to expand as ice does, creates a lot of force.

Along comes spring, longer days, warmer days, days that stay warmer longer, and along with that comes more water. As you all know ice floats, even huge volumes of ice like I've just described. However, by now all that ice is really stuck to the banks and leaking around the edges, though it happens quite a bit, can't happen fast enough. The ice breaks.

Now back to our sound and those drums. Have you ever watched a crack develop across a windshield? It starts with a rock thrown up by someone's tire, and then this line creeps across the glass, maybe it's a single line, maybe it grows fingers that also creep and grow. Ice does the same thing only pretty fast. In your imagination, place one of those drums along the ice at every potential corner, crinkle, and finger and at every joint of said finger. As soon as the first crack gives way, at the first drum's Pow, a domino effect occurs, and by the time the sound from one drum reaches the next one, it sounds off, and then the next, and then the next, all in a row, all echoing, and each one of them a tiny fraction of a different note.

Here we get into sound-waves. As sound travels away from you, the note gets lighter. If it is coming toward you, it gets heavier.

Standing on the edge of the river when the 'drums' sound off, whether it starts in front of you and runs off away up or down river, or whether is starts somewhere away from you and travels toward you, it has a profound affect on you. That echoing PowPowPow (the series may be as few as a handful or take as long as a minute) will enthrall, thrill and frighten you all at once. You are enthralled at the amazing sound, though no visible change took place in front of you. You are thrilled by the magnitude of power so displayed though you can scarcely grasp what that power really is. And you are frightened as the sound sends chills up your spine and goose-flesh down your arms.

All of this brings me to a story that happened to me during my first winter out here. We were care-taking at a lodge up Lake Creek and we'd made friends with the care-takers at Riversong across the Yentna. Now eventually both the care-takers at Riversong and us got snowmachines but I don't rightly remember if either of us had them yet. We probably did since there was a trail and it was more than a foot trail. Anyway, I like to walk, and for a reason I can't remember anymore, I was walking back from Riversong one nice day. I was out in the middle of that river, walking on upwards of likely more than three feet of ice and at least another several feet of snow - it was a REALLY heavy snow year that year thanks to Mount Readoubt - when the drums sounded off. PowPowPowPow - the sound traveled directly across in front of me, and then the ice under my feet dropped about six inches. In the front of my mind, I know that nothing the ice could do right now was a danger to me, but to have that much ice just go down, no matter the inches, under my feet was heart stopping. Needless to say, I froze in my tracks. A few feet in front of me I could see the crack - the trail now had a very visible step up.

The ice didn't break because of my presence, my weight was as a feather when compared to all that ice. The break would have happened whether I had made my trip five minutes earlier or later. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. There was no water, no danger at all and no further drum-roll, yet it took me what seemed like forever to start breathing again. No, I didn't hurry off the ice, I was in no danger, it was all so very awesome and I've never been so scared in my life. It is one of those experiences I will never forget.

I hope I was able to help you hear break-up. It really is something worth the experience.

Getting Supplies in the Fall

Getting supplies here is something that takes planning. Normally, I get about 95% of my supplies and fuel during the course of the summer. This winter, we plan to spend a few months in Eagle River with my son and his wife, and without someone here to keep the fire going, having things that could be damaged by freezing needs to be kept at a minimum. Having things that need to be kept frozen needs to be kept at a minimum too because there's no guarantee temperatures will remain below freezing. So, instead of bringing home cases of meats and vegetables and filling the freezer, I only ordered a few family packs to get us by for a couple months. Said damageables - those that are left over when we leave - will go to town with us.

This plan to go to town, made ordering supplies during the summer next to impossible. I was able to order a few things, but I was reluctant to burden my boss with a bunch of shopping - she just loves to go shopping. Therefore, what I needed to do was get my supplies later and by a different avenue.

Later came yesterday, and my husband thought you all might be interested in reading about it.

Denali Flying Service flies for us frequently - fuel, transportation, and even supplies. They are a family owned business and Kirstin runs the office and does the expediting while Berry does the flying. Earlier this week, I called in my order and Berry flew it out yesterday at four in the afternoon. Earlier in the day would have been nice - to give us more time to get it all to the house, but that was the available slot.

When you all go shopping, you load your shopping cart with your goodies, pay for it at the cashier's counter then wheel it out to your car. After you drive home, it's a simple matter of carrying the handy-dandy little white shopping bags into the house and putting your purchases away. And what is under your feet all this time? Nice smooth linoleum floor in the store. Asphalt in the parking lot. Sidewalk on the way to the house. Please, keep that in mind as you read on. I didn't get the pleasure of doing my own shopping, so all things linoleum and asphalt or concrete was not for me to enjoy.

My husband and I discussed distances. We've never had a machine, ATV or snowmachine, that had a working odometer until now, so I always told everyone that it was a quarter mile from the house to the boat. It takes me about ten minutes or so to walk it and I seldom hurry. However, my husband says that our new snowmachine has a working odometer and it says that walk is about half a mile. I also googled it and I guess I've been wrong all these years. About half a mile it is.

From that point to where Berry can land the plane, is another ten or so minute walk, so that's another half mile, though that second half mile is no stroll. I had to cross a little creek. It isn't very wide, a couple steps worth is all, but I'm not one to jump across, and getting my feet wet when the water is near freezing is not a smart alternative. We have a little twelve foot, flat-bottom boat that's easy to move around, so guess what - instant bridge. My little bridge has been across that creek for about a week now - I needed to check the gravel bar to make sure it was clear of sticks and such so Berry could land safely.

Yesterday, we left the house at 3:30. Since our four-wheeler's once flat tire was flat again, we took the snowmachine down with a small sled on behind (no, there is no snow yet). At the boats, there's a hill to go down, and since my boat is still in the middle of everything, the snowmachine had to stay at the top of the hill. We walked down the hill and across the my little bridge, and then we drug the little boat across to the slough. My husband paddled down to the gravel-bar while I walked along the bank. As banks go, it was not level - maybe fifteen or twenty degrees. And all of it is littered with melon-sized rocks and smaller - prime ankle-twister territory, but none of it is loose, nor is it slippery since all the rocks are dusted with left-over river silt. Along the way is also two now high and dry sweepers - thankfully, the water was low enough to make getting past these two obstacles relatively easy. Though my husband had the easy trip, I made it to the gravel-bar before he did and at the same time Berry landed. Perfect timing - almost never happens.

After unloading the nice little white bags, boxes of vegetables, and various jugs of motor oil and cooking oil, we chatted for a few minutes, catching up on the happenings in Berry's life. New computer, face-lift time for the plane - the usual. Then he was off.

We loaded our supplies into the boat - I carried the eggs, and then it was the trip in reverse for us. Don paddled the boat and I walked. The slough is very low, but there's still a bit of current, not much since any water coming into the slough is likely filtering through the gravel up at the mouth, but enough to make paddling harder going this direction. However, Don discovered that much of the route he was taking, had, over the years, filled in, enabling him to pole as much as paddle.

Back at the beginning of that part of our journey, we unloaded the boat and carried our supplies to the little creek, then we had to drag the boat over and recreate my little bridge. At this point some things could be handed across and some things could be tossed, but there were still things that had to be carried every step of the way. Just so you know, the level of the water is eight to ten feet below normal traveling water levels so my little bridge over it's little creek is on the bottom of the river. That said, all these supplies had to be carried up the bank to where I have the boats parked for the winter. The last thing to come up was my little bridge. Have we worked hard enough yet? We're only half way home.

I brought my kiddy sled to help with this part and it was up the last hill and to the snowmachine. In my sled went boxes and heavy bags and my husband carried those items that had handles. Between the two of us we each made four trips up and down that hill and there's still a 60 lb bag of dog-food down there. I'll get it tomorrow with my kiddy sled.

Now it was the half mile trip back to the house. My husband drove - I walked, in my kiddy sled was the eggs, the ramen and creamer. The ramen was crushable, the creamer didn't have any handles to thread a bungee-cord through, and of course there was the eggs. Once I reached the house, we took a few minutes break, and then it was carting it all in. Huge sigh here. The task is done and we're all tucked in and cozy until we head to town.

Needless to say, I was too tired to do much editing, so I did a little Facebook, cooked supper in the oven, and then it was off to bed for me. Also needless to say, if I can avoid this scenario, I do. Though we almost always get some supplies in this manner, I usually do this much later so we can use the snowmachine to haul everything, including me, all the way from the plane to the house. MUCH easier.