Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig!

Back in Alberta again!

6 days short of 11 months - and our "year" in the wilds is over. There were days that it went way too fast, but a few days that I couldn't get back to Alberta fast enough. We spent the last two weeks of our time there at our "happy place," our claim cabin. It was wonderfully quiet, except for the buzzing of mosquitoes, of course! We returned late one night from going to our last mail day, expecting a mosquito free cabin, since we hadn't been going in and out all day only to find that they had found their own way in! There were hundreds of them! Thankfully I found an old can of RAID that made it's way out there somehow, because I don't use the stuff! We fogged the cabin and hid under blankets for almost an hour, then climbed out into only mildly toxic air and went to sleep! It was that or wear OFF! to sleep - I figured the RAID was the lesser of two evils.

The last few weeks flew by, there was packing to do - we had to unpack and repack a few things at the claim, goodbyes to say, and a few groups of friends visited from home. "Jerry" the backhoe hitched a ride back to Grande Prairie and was sent to auction. There will likely be no mining this year unless a good deal on a new piece of equipment is found. Of course, when gold is the highest it has been in years - we are unable to get any. When it was $200.00 an ounce not too many years back we worked our tails off on our summer holidays to get a few ounces! That same few ounces this year would have been worth a whole lot more!

We are spending time at my parents' place until the end of July when our house becomes available again. Tim has been busy doing some repairs to my truck, and the kids are having fun playing at Grandma and Papa's. I am happy to be back again. It was hard to leave, but we are ready for the next page in our lives. We want to build a house in a year or two and need to find somewhere to do that.

I never wanted to mention any names of our good friends and neighbors out there to respect their privacy - but wanted to give them all an individual goodbye - I think I can do this safely: Goodbye to Bart, Belle, Brew, Bunny, Coco, Cohen, Cooney, Gaylord, Kiera, Little Bird, Lucy, Nina, Noble, Simba, Trigger and Tykie - and to your wonderful owners - we had a blast and you helped make that possible! From the kids - a special goodbye to Bart - he knocked them over a few times and got busy on them - Nola wanted to know why Bart was "digging" on them. Too funny!

Ugh!

I think I am a little closer to being ready to leave. After moving to the claim last week we dug to the bottom of the deepfreeze for some meat only to find that it is all moldy... yuck! There were a few things that were OK - vacuum sealed stuff and things bought recently - but the rest is dog food. Maybe life without refrigeration is not so great after all! We are looking forward to fresh steaks with no "aged" flavor! We will be pretty close to out of food by the 25th when we leave - I had only packed enough dry goods to last a week and Tim wants to stay two! We should have some interesting meals over the next few days as we are down to weiners, bacon and smokies, noodles and rice. I don't care if I ever have another hot dog...

Chipmunk

We saw this little fellow on our drive tonight. He or she was happily munching on a dandelion head. If that is a favorite food - there is no need to worry about running out around here!

It looks like from the "leftovers" that the little chipmunk likes the yellow tips only. Friends that are moving soon up to their summer place out here have a whole family of chipmunks living near their cabin. They are well fed with sunflower seeds and provided with nesting material too. They look forward each spring to getting out to see their chipmunk babies. There are over 30 of them and they are really quite tame. If you sit still in a lawn chair, they will scamper in and out of your feet looking for seeds. We will get to see them next week!

Nola caught a frog today with the help of their friends, the girls at the Germansen Landing store. Each week the kids look forward to seeing the girls. There is always lots to do there - they have horses, a guinea pig, mice, snakes - lots of good stuff! This froggy met his end though, his last trip was down the gullet of a garter snake - the kids thought that was really interesting to see. We stopped back at the store a few hours later, and they were equally as interested to see the bulge in the middle of the tiny snake...

Cheers!

A friend in the valley who is an expert at home brewing of all sorts - made a batch of homemade root beer and shared it with the kids. I think they thought it was Christmas - they were pretty excited to get a whole pop to themselves!

The trommel

All loaded up and ready to go. It took two loads to safely transport the trommel to Williams Lake, and it was thankfully made without event except one flat tire on the trailer I was pulling (the smaller one with the hopper on it.) When fully assembled, the gravel from a placer claim is dumped with a backhoe or trackhoe into the hopper, water is sprayed into the hopper and the gravel self feeds into the trommel (the 3 foot casing which is turned by a gas motor.) From the trommel the water/gravel slurry dumps into the sluices and the water does the rest. Gold is 19 times heavier than water so there is no need to worry about it being carried out the end. It stays in the top foot or so of the carpets. Very rarely have we ever found any further down the sluice - it has happened on occasion when a surge of gravels comes through though. If the trommel being fed properly, there is no risk of this happening. The bottom picture shows the "nugget traps" on the top end of the sluice where all the big gold will stay. It will be a happy day for the new owner of this trommel when he looks in there and sees an abundance of yellow! We could not (OK, I say WE - but I mean Tim - I didn't do much, if anything!) have done this as easily as we did without the help of some friends and truly wonderful people who let us build this in their yard. When Tim started building this we were still snowmobiling in and out so it worked best to have it somewhere that he could easily get the trailer into to drop off the steel, etc. Thank you guys!!

Osprey

The male - circling in the sky above the nest.

The female waiting in the tree.

The nest. On our drive tonight we spotted these two osprey in the sky above their nest. The nest was on the edge of a logging block. We wondered if loggers have to be considerate of such things when they see them and that's why there was still a small stand of mature trees around it? We will assume so. When we shut the quads off - there were no peeps that we could hear coming from the nest, they are probably still sitting on the eggs for a few days yet, osprey incubate them for close to 5 weeks. They also mate for life. Awww. How romantic. It was a nice sight to see.

Just in case you didn't know what it looks like...

This is bear scat. Do not be alarmed if you see it :) only be alarmed if the animal that made this mess is in plain view. We went for a drive tonight, and did not see any bears, but saw PLENTY of bear scat. Below are 3 piles right close to one another - and when we shut the quads off you could hear several ravens calling. Perhaps a moose was killed in the trees? We did not go exploring to find out! I have read though, that if you see plenty of "leavings" in the same area, that it is a feeding or bedding down area. So, in answer to the age old question "does a bear $h*t in the woods?" We think the answer is no - they seem to really like the road.

Music Fest at the Lake!

This weekend, there is a music fest out here at the lake. Acoustic guitars, harmonicas and who knows what else! I have been looking forward to this all year hoping we would still be here for it. I have only seen pictures from previous years but it looks like fun. Knowing Cohen's love for acoustic guitar I think I am just about as excited for him as for me. People who are attending it start flying in in a couple of days. I can't wait to see the bush planes coming in for this! We still have a few weeks here yet and look forward to a few days of it being spent going to this.

You never know where life will take you...

I am writing tonight from a hotel room in Quesnel. I came with Tim and hauled one of the two loads that make up the trommel he built to Williams Lake, BC. Believe it or not we are staying an extra night so the kids can swim - and to break up the driving a bit - there has been a few hours spent behind the wheel in the last few days. This is also beautiful, green, bug free country so we are not heartbroken at spending an extra day here. We even hit the museum and Tim walked all over downtown with us without complaint!

On Thursday, June 3 was our 10 year wedding anniversary. On our honeymoon, after some re-routing - we ended up in Quesnel, and out to Barkerville. How funny that 10 years later to the day we are in the same spot! If you had told me a month ago we would spend our 10 year anniversary where we honeymooned I would have thought you were crazy.

Long story short - the trommel is complete and delivered. Now that it is close to the time we will be leaving the lake we have to get back to packing as soon as we are back. I am a little behind as I am procrastinating a bit about it, but it will be all business next week as there is still lots to do whether we want to or not. We will move up to the claim for a week or so after we leave the lake. Friends from the "outside" are coming in to work at their claim on the 11th and we would like to be a part of that. There are also some prospector friends coming in on the 7th that we will catch up with this week too.

Oh, did I mention that somewhere in here I will also drive back to Alberta for a day to renew my driver's license which expires in the middle of June? I don't know if I have said it on here or not before, but I have to agree with Tim when he says that this year that was supposed to be more about slowing down has been the busiest year of our lives! The winter went by in a flurry of mail days and trapping and skinning days. There were two trapping days each week in the middle of winter, 2 skinning days, 1 mail day and 1 day preparing for mail day. That only left 1 or 2 days a week together - the same situation we had back at home. We brought so many things we never even got to do! I have boxes of books, crafts and puzzles that I really didn't have to bring - but how were we to know?