Spring

Chopping out the boat launch



 

First boat ride of the year

 

Snow & shelf ice at The Shack

 

evening bonfire

 

Painting The Shack

It was a rainy weekend in Delta but we did manage to get the siding painted in between squalls, the paint sprayer made the work go MUCH faster! We will be painting the trim bright white, but that will have to wait for a future weekend. As will the deck staining.....

Both evenings were beautiful though....perfect weather for a nice fire and some fishing time.

The rainy weather was quite conducive to fly tying. Mike brought out his mom's old boxes and the kids had a BLAST tying up a bunch of flies...some of them look like they might catch a fish too!  Thanks Gramma!

We finished the outhouse too, this is the best one we have built yet!

Summer

Solstice is now past and our days will be getting steadily shorter. How do these changes happen so quickly??

We've been busy this summer with the Interior Baseball League (Travis is playing & Mike is coaching):
 
 






Visits to the Delta Clearwater River:

Biologists-In-Training

The Shack with new deck & steps

Teklanika River:

Wall tent camp

 

The Cabin with solar panel kit installed

 and a Fathers Day trip to the Copper River to catch salmon to fill our freezer.

Copper River Camp 2012

Happy Fathers Day!

Guesstimated 50 pound king salmon

2 families, 40 sockeye & 8 king salmon

Audra took a work trip out to Lake Minchumina in early June.....beautiful!

Calm Morning

Windy Afternoon

Mt McKinley & Mt Foraker at 5am

Boating season is here!

We made our first trip to the DCR on April 28, it was just a quick overnight trip; but it felt great to be out on the water again.

This last weekend (May 5-6) we were able to stay two nights, so we got the porch added on and some other tasks done. It was still cold though, we had to break ice out of the dog bowl in the mornings and we ran the heater both nights!

start of porch

 

adding the decking



bunks

reading and cribbage



porch with stairs

Fall Fishin' at The Shack

We headed out Saturday to the DCR after Travis’ first hockey practice….we didn’t end up leaving town until almost 4pm though since I was dealing with jersey sizing issues at the rink, we hadn’t loaded the boat yet and we still had to have lunch….geesh! Of course this all might have had something to do with the fact that we were out spearing whitefish until 1am the night before…..

Luckily the boat ride to The Shack is all about 5 minutes, so we had the boat unloaded and we were relaxing by the fire by 6:30. A beautiful evening with a lot less boat traffic than we see in the summer! More duck hunters too. We didn’t bring any shot guns this year, but I’ll bet we’ll try next fall.

We got our “new” Craigslist table & chairs set up and our snazzy flannel sheet curtains hung (yup, there are those advanced sewing skills of mine at work). The Shack is looking pretty nice inside if I do say so myself!

It got chilly Saturday night, we even woke up to a little bit of snow! We were quite toasty inside though, our kerosene heater worked great. We were really happy that we made the decision to insulate The Shack.

Fishing went well, when we got to our favorite coho (silver salmon) spot Piper caught two right off the bat. Then nothing for about 45 minutes, but then they really started to bite...

 






 

 

Our Delta friends showed up so we all fished together for a while then we headed back to the cabin to relax by the fire for a bit. Travis got really industrious and re-dug out the outhouse hole that had filled in after the rains we had late in the summer. THIS time we put a barrel in the hole so it won't collapse again!

We got off the river at just about sunset….the full moon looked amazing.

A great way to end boating season….although it is a bit sad to put the boat to bed for the winter.

August 19 - 21, insulating & paneling The Shack

It was supposed to be a rainy weekend in Delta, but we totally lucked out and had sunshine almost all Saturday and Sunday! Perfect weather for cutting plywood and insulation OUTSIDE.

We got to The Shack about 9pm on Friday night, the weather kept getting windier and darker and by the time we were inside heating up bison chili for dinner it was blowing and raining sideways. Luckily we were nice and toasty inside and you couldn’t hardly hear the wind at all. We did get all the insulation, plywood and mattress (for Mike and I!) unloaded before the rain….the kids are getting to be great helpers and even though the wind kept trying to make sails out of the plywood they managed to work together and haul pieces up.

As we were just about to eat dinner Mike spotted a cow moose and her calf out in the “yard”, they were nonchalantly munching away and meandering around the deck platform. Those are the first moose we’ve seen on the property out there….pretty cool!

Calf moose

Saturday we woke up to some surprise sunshine, so after breakfast we hauled almost everything out of the Shack and got right to work on insulating the roof, we were done by lunch time and we gave our leftover pieces to the downriver neighbor who is also building. He isn’t quite to the insulation stage yet, but he was happy to get the batts. 

After lunch we started the “paneling”, we are doing essentially the same thing we did up the Tek, using thin plywood like paneling. The stuff we got from Lowes wasn’t in quite as good of shape as we would have liked (it was a bit stained), but we are going to paint the inside anyway, so it isn’t a huge deal. Measuring and cutting for all the window/ door openings definitely took a while. Luckily Piper and Travis stepped up and made dinner (moose spaghetti) so Mike and I could keep working.

A wizard and rogue stopped by as they were out adventuring...

Sunday we finished paneling the ceiling & gable ends (again, in the sunshine!). We are really happy with the way it turned out, so essentially The Shack is done now except for inside & outside window trim and painting. Both of which can really wait until spring (the siding came preprimed).

We also hauled out some more pallets and improved the “boardwalk” a bit this trip. With all the rain we’ve been getting there were definitely some wet spots on the trail that we wanted to be able to step over. We headed out about 4pm so we could hit the Buffalo Center Drive In for one last set of shakes & burgers before their Labor Day closure.