Last time I posted I wanted to keep going because I still had a lot of catching up to do, but my post was already too long, so this is kind of like a continuation.
A couple weeks ago, we decided to drive up to the cabin and check up on it. About half way there, we came to a blink-of-an-eye little town called Willow (if you blink while driving through it, you'll miss it), and right on the highway is this store where they sell "big boy toys" and there was this side-by-side sitting outside. Chuck was interested in seeing it, so we stopped to look at it and asked the guy a ton of questions. As a result of the virus, manufacturing these things has slowed down a lot, so the stores that sell them run out of them really fast because they're not able to stock very many of them, and this was the last one that they had.
So we decided to buy it because it was a good deal, and we "needed" one, and we knew that if we didn't get it, there was a good chance we would not be able to find another one, at least not this year.
It is a 2019 model, but brand new - it only had 20 miles on it.
And it is WAY better than the last one we owned!
So Chuck filled out the loan information for the bank, but we had to wait for the approval, so we continued on to the cabin and told the guy we'd stop by on our way back home to finalize the papers.
It felt good going to the cabin again - we hadn't been there for 2 years. When we got to this fallen tree blocking our path, we knew it was a sign that no one had been there in awhile, even though we left a key with two different people to go there, enjoy it, look after it for us, and pick all the blueberries they want, which is what they did last summer, but that was LAST summer.
Good thing Chuck brought his chainsaw along.
It was nice to see the cabin again. Our little getaway place.
Right away we noticed how much more "open" it was because our friend Barry took down a lot of trees. We were thankful for this because he took down the ones that were all dead from the spruce beetles, and all those dead ones are not good to have around when there's a wild fire, which does happen. There are still a LOT of dead ones that need to come down, but Barry gave us a good head start.
We have a lot of work to do there.
And not only that, they had a TON of snow last year, and no one came during the winter to clear the snow off the cabin, which resulted in a damaged roof that's bowed now from the the weight of all that snow (the roof of the outhouse is also damaged). We don't know what to do about it, if we should try to fix it, OR Chuck is thinking about maybe building a new cabin because this one isn't built very well anyway. We don't know yet if we will do that, but I think that would be a really fun project!
We also found evidence of a "squatter" in our cabin. Little piles of nut shells everywhere!
And the squatter himself was found dead lying in front of the couch.
Who knows how or why he chose to die in that very spot?
Dead flies were EVERYWHERE, but we expected that. It happens every spring. So it was my job to vacuum them all up in the Shop-Vac.
Yeah, the one with the missing wheel so the Shop-Vac keeps tipping over.
So annoying - I hate that thing. I wish Chuck would replace the missing wheel on that thing.
I checked on the blueberries and they are doing very well! All that snow they got last year probably helps the blueberries. After we cut down more dead spruce trees, it might help them even more.
So we spent the afternoon just cleaning up the place. While Chuck did stuff outside, I worked on the inside, vacuuming up flies and wiping stuff down. Everything was just dirty.
Chuck got rid of that squatter for me though. He picked it up with a shovel and said it was weird because it was really light and dried out, like a dried out cardboard shell. It must've been there a long time, but I don't know how he could rot on the floor without leaving any trace of bodily fluids or anything like that.
It's too gross to think about it, so I digress.....
So on our way home, we stopped by that store in Willow again and finalized the papers, but we couldn't bring the side-by-side home yet because they needed to clean it up and attach some extras that Chuck wanted on it, and besides, we had no way of getting it home without a trailer. So a couple days later we bought a trailer, and a week later we were able to bring our new toy home. It's a good feeling to start getting some toys back again. Before winter comes, we will probably get our snowmachines back, and maybe a meat trailer if Chuck wants to go hunting. Anyway, just one thing at a time, right?
Also, in my last post I wanted to mention that we saw PW. We had her come over for her birthday. She requested brats, baked beans, and hot fudge sundae cake.
This is one of the main reasons we came back to Alaska - so we can spend birthdays and holidays with our kids.
But this is another reason we came back:
4-wheeler adventures!
Our old "gang" said that they were planning another excursion so of course we wanted to join them, and it was the perfect opportunity to test our new toy.
The weather was gorgeous, and the scenery was gorgeous!
I kept thinking, "we would not be doing this if we were still in Indiana".
Oh, how I have missed this!!!
We were supposed to be a bigger group, but we turned out to be only a convoy of 3 because the others had reasons they had to back out. So it was just us and Jason and his kids, and his daughter's boyfriend.
Because our group was smaller than planned, we decided to stop at Friday Creek, instead of going all the way to Knik Glacier as usual.
So we stopped here and made a fire and had S'mores and just hung around for awhile and let the kids play by the water. But the current was fast that day, so we all paid extra attention to the kids and made sure they didn't play in the dangerous parts and get swept away and carried off into the Knik River.
While we were there, Jason took out his skeet equipment and we all took turns shooting until he ran out of shells.
I hit one of out three, which isn't very good, but I'm still surprised that I was able to hit a moving target.
Then we headed back and soaked in all that gorgeous scenery.
So that was our first exciting 4-wheeler trip, and we are looking forward to more.
Our next big project is going to be remodeling the bathrooms, so we are starting to get the ball rolling for that. There is a guy from church who does that kind of work for a living and he does a really good job, so we are hiring him to do it. We have three bathrooms, well 2 and a 1/2 really, and all three of them are in an embarrassing state. I will not feel at ease having guests here until they are all redone.
We are going to start with the master bathroom cuz that one is the worst. It has a terrible "old man pee" smell, and we can't use the shower, so I am desperate to get that one done first! Steve was already here to take measurements and talked to us about our options, so our next step is to go to the "show room" and pick out what kind of shower we want. How exciting!
So I think that is all for now, except I wish I had a picture to share of that moose we saw yesterday. We were coming out of the commissary getting ready to load our groceries into the car, and this young half-grown moose came strolling through the parking lot and walked right along the front of the commissary like he knew exactly where he was going.
Only in Alaska!
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