Is Rice a Good Insulator?

The front door of our cabin is homemade, about 40 years old, and very heavy. It has a heavy wooden latch that would give the biggest bear a run for his money. It is also, I have discovered this week, mostly full of rice, packed in there for future use, by mice. Many people have lived here over the years, but I think we are the first to 'mouse proof' the place. We haven't caught a single one since moving in. A previous resident must have wondered where their winter's supply of rice was disappearing to though. After giving the door a good shove to close it one day, rice rained out the bottom on to the floor. I will definitely take much more care when closing it from now on so as not to release any more of it's contents, because where mice have been, you know there's also bound to be, well, you know.

We took a day trip on the quads yesterday on a nearby logging road, just to see where it went, because we really have nothing more pressing to do! On this trip I was early "shopping" for Christmas trees. I found some nice ones, Times Square, eat your heart out! I didn't think until we returned here though, that by the time Christmas rolls around, the 5 foot tree I picked out will be covered by 8 to 10 feet of snow.

We also quadded over to the other side of the lake, where I have never been before. We stopped in the campground and made a "mountain pie" pizza lunch using our campfire cookers and washed it all down with hot chocolate. We explored some old cabins on the other side of the lake as well. There are 4 over there in total, one trap line cabin that the boys can seek refuge in if they ever need to while trapping (pictured below, notice the pack rat nest on the shelf in the upper left...) he can help keep them warm. Two cabins built on the same site where a lady I met earlier this year lived for about 15 years with her husband starting in the 1970's. The final cabin is owned by the family who "pioneered" this area in the 1930's, by building the current road in to where they were mining. The place is called "Toad Hall." The areas surrounding the cabins on that side of the lake are littered with hundreds of downed trees, some over a foot across at the butt. About 10 years ago - a freak windstorm blew down the mountain on the south side of the lake, uprooting huge trees, it carried on across the west side of the lake knocking down a bunch of trees in the campground there. A friend of ours, Doug, that had been camped there just days before, came back not long after to find many trees criss-crossed where his truck and camper had sat. Luckily no one was there at the time, and all that remains is the mess of trees now. Many have been cleaned up by campers using them for firewood.