Winter

Trying to Eat Trish's Letter

Oren's first snow-go ride

It's getting dark early here now. Since daylight savings went into effect it seems like it is dark almost as soon as I am done working. The sun is setting at about five o'clock now. It isn't getting light until around 11. I have tried to go out fishing the past two Saturdays, but I was thwarted both times. Last weekend I woke up early, made breakfast, and headed out for the first excursion of the year on the snowmachine. It was a nippy minus ten degrees that morning. Our snowmobile was complaining the whole ride out there, not enough snow. I winced every time I scrunched over rocks, fearing the worst. I made it all the way out to the fishing spot no worse for the wear. As I was navigating the twisty, turny trail I remembered that I forgot salmon eggs for chumming. "Son of a!" I thought to myself. On the way back I decided to take the shorter route where I had to cross some open water instead of driving across the ice. I got back to the house alright and got the eggs then went to start the snowmobile and it wouldn't start. It might have been overheating or the plugs might have been fouled, either way I decided to bunch it for that day.

Kayla and Oren

Apparently ten inches of snow fell during the storm but you wouldn't know that by looking at the ground. We actually have significantly less snow after the storm. It all blew to Russia or something. The only place where the snow stuck was where it was packed down from people driving on it, and the drifts of course. I figured after all the snow had blown away I would try to take the four wheeler out fishing. I didn't make it far at all. There was a big snowdrift down the bank that I got stuck in. As I was digging myself out a couple of snowmachines were coming back from upriver. They pushed me the rest of the way out. Apparently they had been upriver a ways, and tried to cross but got stuck because the water was too deep. After I got unstuck I probed the river bank for spots to cross over the ice but came up with nothing. I didn't want to go through the water because my wheels would have frozen in short order. If I would have went through the water it wouldn't have mattered because the banks on the other side of the river were drifted about five feet deep. Instead I went out on the lakes by the school and set a couple of snares for fox.

Crashed

Moral of the story. Last week I should have taken the four wheeler, this week I should have taken the snow machine.

Checking Out the Blizzard

We had school canceled preemptively on Wednesday this week because the storm of the decade was supposed to hit. It was supposed to be really bad on the coast, but it wasn't too bad here. It was pretty windy for most of the day with gust up to 60 mph, but other than that it wasn't bad at all.

Testing New Parky in the Storm