Company from Home

We got our first visitors from home Wednesday and the kids were soooo excited to see faces that they knew from back home come all this way to our neck of the woods.  We had a quick visit from my uncle back in December, and that was equally exciting, but this time the visitors were able to stay.  Four friends and relatives of ours and Tim and Martina came in to go sledding with Tim and Paul.  We went out for our usual mail day expecting the guys to arrive any time in the afternoon, and that they did.  Three of the four guys have come here in the past with Tim and Paul to go sledding at the claim cabin and were surprised to see what an easy trip they had ahead of them this year.  In years past they unload on the side if the road and load their sleds and skimmers and take off breaking trail in all sorts of deep snow conditions.  Sometimes they were even forced to unhook, take what they needed for the night from the skimmers and just try to get to the cabin so they could get some sleep.  Wearing snowshoes while driving the sleds because if you had to get off for some reason you sunk past your waist.  This year was quite a different story as the trail they are using is the trail we use on a weekly basis. And this one is not neglected in the least from the Drag Queen and is very nice to travel.  So within minutes we were all packed up and headed to our home.   They ate supper with us then moved on to the claim cabin for a few days of fun.
This mail day I also put in a grocery order and found out that my kids can actually get excited over fruits and veggies.  I have been trying to use up the frozen and canned that I brought in along with supplementing that  supply with a little fresh stuff from the store  But we all know that fresh is the best, and when you are over 3 hours from the nearest grocery store with an ample supply, we tend to go without a little more than I would have back home.  And taking it home here is a different story when travelling by snowmobile.  We have 3 of the good 5-6 day coolers that we warm up in the cabin overnight, then we put hot water bottles in them to keep them warm for the trip and to keep the produce from freezing before we get home.  And this grocery order was primarily produce and a little dairy, so I didn't want to see anything get ruined.  We were just talking about an article that one of us read that said 40% of produce bought is thrown in the garbage at home.  Well I can honestly say, not here.  The wasting of such a precious thing does not happen at our house, the kids have been eating nothing but the fresh stuff since we got it home.  They devoured the strawberries as soon as they spotted them and I could wash them, then moved on to the grapes.  I think I'll have to put in orders for freshies a little more often! 

A Few Projects Paul Has Been Working On

These are the 2 drags Paul has built for him and Tim to pull behind their sleds.  The "Drag Queens",

 make the trails smooth like highways.

 

Here is the Teeter Totter

These 2 benches for around the campfire were made from a curved tree hanging out over a bank.  Pretty nice work.

Over 1000

Well I have offically put 1200 kms on my sled so far this year, and Paul is over 4500 kms on his.  Paul's higher numbers are due to the trapline days, when he goes out checking and I stay home with the kids. 
We, along with the friends from the valley, finally punched through the trail we were working on and have used it already a few times in the past few weeks.  It was a lot of hard work but worth it, now we can come out on part of the road in the valley near our friends house.  We are then about 15 miles from town.  We moved our truck to near that spot and have it to travel the rest of the way to town and make our many visiting stops that we do on mail day.  The kids like the break from the snowmobiles and enjoy the truck time.
Speaking of mail day, Martina and I were staring wide-eyed at some of the other ladies mail.  On some of our recent visits with them, we couldn't help but notice their gardening catalogues.  And low and behold, they are already receiving their orders.  We are so envious of them.  Most of the ladies in the valley have quite nice garden spots and with a farmer in the valley, even have black dirt and manure!  
We have one more week of trapping for marten, wolverine and a few others, we are at 147 marten and 3 wolverine now.  All the other numbers are the same.

Everyday Things

Our weather here has been very nice since the new year, ranging from -15 to -8 at night and ranging from -8 to 0 during the days.  It has been very overcast with the clouds hanging low on the mountains, in fact there are some mountains that we have not seen the tops of for many days.  We wish that if it was going to be so cloudy that at least we would get some snow to go with it, but not so.  We keep waiting for this big dump that will leave us with snow, snow, snow.  But this year has left us just waiting, as the levels are much lower than normal.  We have plenty for snowmobiling and snowshoing, but not the amounts that the mountains are known to have.  The other day I took off my snowshoes and stood beside my sled, when I stepped off the packed trail I sunk down to where the footboards on the sled where level with my hip and my feet were not on firm ground yet. 
For most of December and probably a good part of January, we got direct sunlight for only about 3 hours, in the late morning and over lunch.  Then the sun moved behind the mountain that is directly across the lake from us, and we had only sunlight, not direct sunshine.  We figure that once we see the sun through the clouds again that it should be well over that mountain now and we will be back to having sunshine all day long. I decided to leave my solar Christmas lights up, since during the Christmas season as I mentioned, we only had sunshine for that short time and the lights did not last long at night.  I'm hoping when the weather clears, the kids will be able to enjoy them again.
The past week we have been working from our end to open up an old trail that will lead us to the west end of the valley, where all the folks live that we visit.  Opening up this trail will cut down on the road riding we have to do when we want to visit people who live at that end.  Plus it is something more for us to do.  Working on the trail consists of  us snowshoing a trail for the snowmobiles and cutting any deadfall or brush that is in the way.  Move the sleds up and keep going.  We are following maps and the advice of the man who made this trail 20 years ago for his dog sled.  They are also working from their end.  Each day we go out we stop and listen every now and then to see if we can hear their sleds or chainsaws.  We email each other at the end of the day and give each other GPS co-ordinates and a description of where we left off.  Such as the approximate size of a meadow, a trail maker we may have left behind, or a description of a valley or ridge that we may be close to.  Tomorrow we are going out again and with any luck we will finally meet up. 
The trapping is slowing a little, but still very good numbers, 128 marten now.