Seasons

Ho-Ho-Ho!!!

/ Melinda / 1 Comment
Christmas tree of old

Merry Christmas everyone!!!  Hope this holiday finds you great joys and peace with your friends and family. Lots of laughter as well.  To all my friends on the road… hugs are in order, be safe and start a new tradition.  

My Christmas’s have been unconventional for several years. The challenge arises in finding a new way to experience it. This year, will be spent with long time friends, a different set from the ones I spent with last year in FL. This year its with John & Cheri, right here in Haines.  It will be relatively low key, but that’s just fine with me.  We might venture up the road to go find snow, so we can do some snowshoeing… or we may sit around the wood stove and spin some yarn.
Well, I’ve had two more sales since I last wrote and I am now done with the weekly sales. Competing with bizarres, the holiday sales, etc has not been in my favor as a rule. But I seriously have no complaints.  I still have a couple of more furniture items to sell – sofa table, end table, two bar chairs and could even sell my trundle bed that I’m sleeping on, but may wait on that for a bit. I managed to find a home for my microfiche/microform reader, donated to the local museum. And my Mom’s wheelchair, walker, bedside commode – donated to Haines Hospice! Thrilled to have found someone for those, as this town is over run with donated medical equipment.  I plan to have two more sales – one of office supplies (gads, I have a ton of that stuff) and then one more for my weaving and spinning friends – yes, I’m going to sell off some of my cones of yarn. Shocking, I know… laughing here.  I can actually see a light at the end of the tunnel.  My goal was to get down to 1500 pounds or less… I’m close, I’m real close…
And now that I have room to stretch around here… I am re-focusing on going paperless. Then finish putting my big loom back together to weave. I want to get some bigger items made that I can not do on my little floor loom in my rig.  May even make some yardage to make some vests, etc.  That will use up some of the cones of yarn (a weight I don’t need to carry in my rig).  And then need to decide when I leave here…
In the meantime… my new love is Zumba.  Wow!  I’m loving every minute of it.  I had wanted to take dance lessons this winter, never dreamed I’d take up and love Zumba.  My body is still rebelling with itself – you know what the hands are doing vs what your feet are doing, but each session its getting so much easier and I feel awesome!!!  Each hour session flies by… what fun!
So on that note.. have a very merry Christmas!

Timing of it all

/ Melinda / Leave a comment
Storm clouds

Well, it pays to follow the forecast at this time of the year.  Today, the sun came out for about 3 hours – glorious 60ºF – got rugs shook, swept out the rig, washed the floor, dumped tanks, refilled water. Then boom… the rains returned. Today and tomorrow morning is the last of the “balmy” weather.  So, I’m heading west.  Frozen precipitation is forecast for here tomorrow night.  In fact, its forecast for this whole next week in this region, including up in Haines. Bummer.  So am heading for Prince Rupert tomorrow morning.  There forecast is moderating temperatures around 40-50ºF and rain. Quite doable.

Not sure if I will have wifi in Prince Rupert – usually not until I’m on the ferry and the ferry is in an American port.  So may not be able to post until after the 9th of October. But time will tell on that.

The river and changing landscape

This is a picture behind my rig here at Fort Telkwa… its really a pretty little place.  The wind came thru last night and all these leaves are now floating down the river.  Bare boring trees now.

I want to share a little recipe I picked up in my travels this past year.  Its called “3-2-1 cake”. Ingredients are:  Mix dry – 1 box of your favorite cake mix and 1 box of Angel Food cake mix together and store in airtight container.   So using one coffee mug, add 3 tablespoons of the dry cake mix, 2 teaspoons of water. Stir well. and cook 1 minute in microwave. Wa-la you have one individual size cake.   You can add ice cream or any other goodie to this if you so wish.

Where’s summer?

/ Melinda / 4 Comments

Its May, right?  So where is summer?  Oh I have been told this area of upstate New York is easily a month behind this year…  It has been like this all these months as I pushed northward up the east coast – it was still winter on arrival and not quite spring when I leave.  And I wanted to go to Nova Scotia this spring… well, this is not the year for that.  There highs are only in the 30’s. Farmers Almanac has forecasted a colder and wetter for all this region thru July. Yes, its been cold and wet here, but doable. Yesterday, the amazing sun showed itself, but the north wind made the 52ºF feel colder then it was out of the wind.  I will probably miss this delightfully cool weather…one of these days..

Anita and I went for a walk a couple of days ago around the town… took some photos…

Unknown flowering tree

Giant dead tree, perhaps a Cottonwood tree

Big old houses with a carriage house behind

Small waterfall on a creek

Original streets were brick, then covered in asphalt

Jackson was waving at us, so we stopped and had him join us

Waterway thru town

One old brick home

Its in pretty good condition, except one can see some rotting wood at top window in front

United Methodist Church

Someone planted some color to their front lawn

A closer view

Tulip tree

closer view of tulip tree

Today is another day of sunshine, but again a northerly wind is blowing… but today, is laundry, chores, cleaning day… as rest of the week is booked. So need to get it done, instead of writing to my blog.  So back to work…

Spring?

/ Melinda / 10 Comments

Oh good grief, where has all the time gone…  I had been hunkered down thru the ice, then high winds and the deluge of rain. After being home bound for 3 days – I escaped from my rig. Couldn’t stand being inside one more minute. Lucky me, the sun came out… it was a gorgeous day.  But that was just 4 days of the last 7. What have I been doing? Who knows… it has been beautiful weather since all those storms tho…

I found the trail down to the river… ere swamp… well maybe it is a river.  Nonetheless, no photos as I forgot my phone.  It was a great hike, saw one alligator for sure and I think I saw another, but it was not moving so not entirely sure on that one. Saw green shoots of something coming up thru the brown grasses… nice to see, but I don’t know what it was.  The birds have been singing.

As I previously mentioned, each spot in this RV park has a cherry tree. Until today, it just showed buds on the tree. Well folks, they have popped open today. Yeah!!!!  Spring is here, right?  And look at that gorgeous blue sky… they say it will hit 70 today. Bring it on…

Buds on Cherry tree

And I brewed some sun tea today… Its been awhile since I’ve been able to do that.

Sun tea

Well, I am long over due using my real camera. The first year on the road, I thought the charger was in storage as I couldn’t find it anywhere in the rig. Then I found it. But I had gotten out of practice using it. Its a Panasonic DMC-FZ40 Lumix. So I pulled it out, recharged it and have started taking practice pictures on different settings to figure out what I’m doing.  Will keep doing it for a bit… but soon the quality of my pictures will/should improve. Or I hope so.  I wish I had a knowledgeable person at my elbow as I learned all this… but we shall see how this all pans out.

Today, I was heading to the commissary and to a place to get propane.  The commissary was closed on Mondays… bummer.  Will have to starve another day… 😉  But I got some propane. $3.00 a gallon – an absolute steal compared to other prices this winter.  Was surprised I only needed 6 gallons. The savings, I’m sure, is that I don’t sleep with heat the majority of the time.  I had last filled up at the end of November somewhere between Pensacola & Tallahassee.  So I’m good to go.

I have a hot date on October 6th with Vince at the Mothership.  All about my paint job. I’ve had cracking around the windows and the bins since I took it out of storage in 2012. They don’t believe its from the harsh cold of Alaska would do this, but rather that the caulking was not dry.  They sent me paint and instructions on how to mix, etc. Well… its not working, its as if I didn’t even try to paint it.  Now I have a new crack thru the green paint at my drivers side tail light. That bothers Vince more than the cosmetic stuff. So we made a date for October. Not sure why the latter concerns Vince, but there no urgency to tend to it at this time. Which is good, as I’m a little far from the Mothership at the moment.