The Countdown Has Begun!

Less than 50 days until the road opens so the countdown has begun! In the meantime, we are like squirrels scurrying around before that first snowfall only our occasion for such hurry is lack of snow. The days have continued to be warm so even though the nights have been somewhat chilly, the snow has been melting. I would estimate that we have about two feet left, an amount that could be eliminated quite quickly if a serious rainstorm were to roll in.

So, I have been making list upon list of things to get in to camp before we can no longer use our sled. Our supply of dog food, dog treats, and dry goods is just about complete. This coming week I will focus on the perishables and bottled water. The perishables require a bit of a balancing act as I need to squeeze as much into my little freezer as I can and check expiration dates for anything that will end up in the fridge. The freezer will be crammed with cans of frozen orange juice concentrate, frozen vegetables ... I did resort to buying some canned peas and green beans and storing them in the basement ... bread, berries, butter, tortellini, pizza cheese, etc. And then, we will keep our fingers crossed that the power stays with us for the next several weeks!

Tomorrow's task is packing up clothes for our weekend escapades to civilization ... hoping that Garrick has all his laundry done before then. We will need to have our bags packed and ready to take out to the truck at the first hint of too much Spring. As we are planning on spending nine days away during Garrick's Spring Break, this could also be quite a balancing act ... not sure if the kids have enough clothes that still fit them to cover both here and there! I think Garrick has grown almost three inches since we arrived at the end of September. Looks like we may have to make some last minute purchases when we head out of town next the weekend.

Hoping for a short mud season -
Karyn

Little House in the Big Woods

Well as you can see from the picture, we still have a bit of snow left. Temperatures have been dropping into the teens at night but are hitting near 40 F during the day, great maple syruping weather. So, the snow is beginning to melt ... slowly. Not sure if you can actually see from the picture that we do have some wood left, it is stacked neatly under the left window, but I know that you can't see how green it is. We have been trying to burn it for the last few days and finally gave up last night. We ended up burning just over three cords worth this winter but this fourth cord is probably going to have to wait until next year. So, while we would like warm weather in order to reduce our oil consumption, we aren't quite ready for the snow to melt yet as it is provides our only path of powered transportation out to the parking lot until mid-May. Quite the quandary!

Adie and I went for a snowshoe this morning, me with the snowshoes on as I am a bit dense (I meant that literally, not figuratively), and her without, she with her bear bell and I with my walking stick, both intended to serve the same purpose: to protect us from 'wild'life. When we first started walking we went without such apparatus. But after seeing what looked to be coyote prints crossing the snowmobile path ... in more than a few places ... and hearing that a coyote had taken down a deer about 3 miles south of us a few weeks back, we are a bit more cautious now. I am, after all, not as large as a deer ... yet ... and I certainly can't run as fast as one, especially in my snowshoes.

We headed for the Masterman Farm, one of the two original properties back here in the woods. (The other, coincidentally, is for sale ... so you too could live the life that I live.) They must still have about 100 acres and a long winding driveway that has to be over half a mile long. The driveway starts out as a path in the woods and then opens up into fields that overlook the lake and the mountains beyond. It is truly breathtaking. I tried to capture it 'on film' ... if that term still applies ... but unfortunately, it was a bit hazy today and my camera ... or perhaps it was the photographer ... just couldn't duplicate the beauty. Anyway, we headed down their driveway toward the lake and walked back home across the frozen water. We have about another five to six weeks before ice-out but I think after this week, our jaunts over the lake will have to be come to an end. While I don't weigh quite as much as a deer, I don't have four legs over which to distribute my load.

Happy St. Partick's Day -
Karyn

Too Good to Be True

No, we didn't go right from Winter to Spring without having to endure "Mud Season". But that too would be too good to be true.

Last week when I was in town running errands and Garrick was also there volunteering at the nursing home and shoveling snow at a friend's, we passed a guy who was selling shrimp ... for $1.25 per pound. They were whole shrimp, with the heads still on but I thought ... that's how we used to buy them at the Dolac Fish Market in Zagreb. I used to make a great Scampi Dish by simmering the whole shrimp in wine and garlic. We would eat them with our hands; first we would break apart the tail and eat the tail meat; then, we would suck the juice out of the head and body portion of the shrimp. It was very sweet and delicious, one of our favorite meals while in Croatia.

Garrick got out of the truck, asked for about two pounds, paid the guy $2.50 and we were on our way. Those of you who know me well, know that I am a bit anal about my To Do List which also contains my meal plan for the week. So, as Shrimp Scampi was not already on the menu, when we got home I tossed the shrimp into the freezer for the following week.

Imagine my disappointment when this morning on the way to the vet (a four hour excursion that included a mere 20 minutes at the actual vet's office ... 55 miles of driving ... each way), when I saw that same shrimp guy, selling those shrimp for $1 per pound in a different town!

Well, this afternoon, I took the bag of shrimp out of the freezer to thaw. And at about six, I started to get ready to prepare dinner: shrimp scampi, linguine, and spinat (Croatian for spinach ... pronounced shpinat). The water for the linguine was in one pot, the spinat was in another, the bottle of wine was uncorked, and I dumped the shrimp into the colander to rinse it off. I rinsed the shrimp with the sprayer but it seemed a little brown. Upon closer examination, I realized that the shrimp were full of sand and dirt. And, upon even further examination, I realized that the amount of meat in the tail of one of the shrimp was about equivalent to the size of an olive pit. When I called Garrick over to help me assess the situation, he immediately said, " Those are bait shrimp, mom!" I only wish he'd realized that last week before I doled out that $2.50!

So, we had cheese and mushroom omelets (more like scrambled eggs) with our spinat tonight. Wish I could say we would be having grilled fish tomorrow night, caught with our freshly thawed bait, but I don't have an auger to make that hole in the ice, and I have no intention of going to get one either.

Have a good weekend -
Karyn

Stranger in the Dark

I knew it was going to be a bad day when I started out by getting the snowmobile stuck in the turnaround on the way back from the bus stop ... sound familiar??? Perhaps I should find a better way to turn the sled around so that I can stop having all these bad days!

This time it only took me about twenty minutes to dig out. Then, I took our new dog Adie for a walk. She is a shelter dog who came from Missouri. She was supposed to be a Christmas present for the kids but she had a few health issues at the last minute and arrived a week after Valentine's Day instead. We picked her up last weekend in Allentown, Pennsylvania and drove her home in a snow storm that dumped another two feet of snow on us. We then put her on the snowmobile and shuttled her into camp just like we do with everyone else. She didn't much like the sled the first time but is adjusting as she realizes that this is the only means for her to get to go in the car with us! As you can see from the picture, she loves the snow and is constatnly burrowing in it trying to find ... squirrels!

Anyway, back to that bad day ... long story short, the truck had to go into the shop "for about two hours" because something was not right when they installed the fuel pump for me back in October. Well, a mere 4 hours and 45 minutes later, we were headed home. As you can imagine, this threw off my whole schedule for the day. We arrived at the parking lot at 3:30, having eaten no lunch and having left the dog home alone for the first time by herself (for 7 hours). I was in a hurry and hopped on the sled in order to get Caroline home, have lunch, and return back to Greenville to pick up Garrick from the nursing home where he now volunteers one afternoon a week. In the tunrnaround at the parking lot ... I sunk the sled, AGAIN! As I was in a hurry, I had not put on my snowpants and we had no shovel. So, Caroline and I began digging with our hands. After fifteen minutes of digging and having the sled only sink deeper each time I tried to move it, I realized that the two of us were probably not going to get the thing out. I sent Caroline home to check on the dog while I went back out to the truck, peeled off my now frozen jeans (in the parking lot - I was standing there in my underwear and really didn't care), put on my snowpants, got the ice scraper from the truck, and resumed my digging, each time sinking the sled a little bit deeper. It actually got so low that I was beginning to see twigs poking through the snow! After an hour, I gave up. I headed back into town to get Garrick. Wouldn't you know it, he had the sled out in less than 10 minutes!

And the excuse for the delay in this week's blog is ... I got sick from all that digging. (The wet jeans probably didn't help!) I had a slight cold to begin with but by the next day, I was hacking and aching. I did my best to rest but had appointments I had to keep and groceries to get. On Friday, I did finally manage to stay in the house all day and even managed to stay in bed for part of the day. I spent the entire day in my PJ's and bathrobe.

Imagine my surprise then, when at about 6:30 that night, there was a knock on the front door! We heard no snowmobile. Garrick opened the door and I went down, in my bathrobe and slippers, to greet a guy in a black and red Yamaha snowmobile suit (because you know how everyone matches their clothes to their snowmobiles up here). Thank goodness we had the dog or I would have been even more scared than I already was. Where did this guy come from and why was he at our house?

Well, apparently, I am not the only one good at sinking sleds. He said he needed help getting his sled out. I asked him how big it was and he answered that it wasn't very big ... it turns out it was a 1000 ... almost twice as big as ours. Garrick rode him out on our sled and helped him get it out, not before the guy dropped the sled on his own foot though.

Hoping that our unexpected visitors in the future will be only the four-legged kind ... they aren't quite so frightening!

Karyn