Lot is Cleared!

Wow, I feel like at the end of most days here, I think to myself, "Today was a perfect day." They just keep coming. My days are often so full here, I could never write about everything. For instance, today I woke up in Becida, drove an hour to church in Backus, am blogging in between, and will go float the Crow Wing River on tubes with my cousins this afternoon before we all get together for supper. I'll have to omit details...

Yesterday, Saturday (but really beginning Friday night), the "short" version:

The previous night, Friday, I had gone to Cass Lake to fill up the bed of my truck with shingles. I got nearly enough for my whole cabin for $125! Acquiring them was a scary excursion to the backwoods trailer house of a couple of drunk guys who seemed like they were probably axe murderers. It turned out they were harmless drunks who were rather cheerful about helping me load 1,000+ pounds of shingles. Only when I returned to Backus did Paul reveal to me that Cass Lake has more homicides than any other place that he knows of in Minnesota.

Anyway, my truck was over-laden still Saturday morning, so I borrowed Paul's Subaru to go buy my new stove for the kitchen. I got a really cute little four burner cabin-sized stove in excellent condition for $25. I think it might have been an even better deal than the shingles. It's nicer than the one in my house in California for which I paid $250. I hauled it back to Backus and we loaded it on Paul's trailer along with an all-terrain vehicle Paul has called the 5 wheeler (for obvious reasons). We attached the trailer to my pickup-full of shingles, thus comprising the heaviest load my truck has ever hauled. I would have been very hesitant to attempt it, but Paul was confident Truck Norris could handle it. He was kind enough to drive though.



We headed up to Becida where we met Sid, the guy who is Paul's neighbor and is building a log cabin (pictured half-built in a previous blog entry) on a lot he bought from Paul. Sid and I seem to have all that in common. The three of us went to Paul's to pick up some windows Paul had laying around and said I could use. This is an amazing opportunity: Sid happens to be in the windows business and said these two giant 5 foot by 6 foot windows Paul just offered me are valued around $500 apiece. Wow, score, I really hope they work out! Sid and Paul were really helpful with loading and unloading the windows and shingles at my lot.





The lot itself was quite a sight to see! Wow, Randy did great work in such a short time. There is about an acre cleared now where my yard will be and I could see so much better the subtle contour of the land. Joel brought his family over, and he and Paul helped me decide the location for my house. We got out a tape measure and some spray paint and marked approximate corner locations for my cabin. Now I can really start to see it all in my mind. I began to picture how the kitchen would be here and the loft would face this way. It was really great, except Paul kept staring at me while I was in my imaginary bathroom. I'm gonna need to build some walls I guess.

Right now the soil is very muddy and that may delay excavation of the basement for a few days. We have had some thunder storms which have brought a couple inches of rain in the past week. It's supposed to clear up soon though. We were able to drive onto the lot with the five wheeler which was great because it had a bed on it so we could haul out shingles and windows.

After dropping off my good junk, we went to look at some timber on the driveway easement to Paul's neighboring lot. Sid needs to harvest more trees for his log cabin. He is going to rent a portable band saw mill and offered to let me use it to mill some boards if I want to use some of Paul's trees in my cabin! I'm really excited about that and hope I'm able to take up his offer.

Once the trees were selected, we went back to my lot and marked out the cabin site.




If you look closely (click to enlarge pic) Paul is standing "inside" my house and three orange stakes are visible at the proposed corners.




Then here are some pics of my cleared yard and building area:

This first one is where the driveway wraps in off the paved road



This shot I took from 20 feet up in a tree while sitting in Paul's deer stand.



Here is my cousin Joel at my lot with his daughter Piper



It was really exciting to hang out at my lot and be able to see it with new vision. While we were looking at timber to cut, Paul and Sid told me a bit about their friend called Constable Bob. In the evening, we ended up getting invited to dinner at the home of the very same person. They had made him out to be a big, loud, gruff man's man. I was imagining someone rather brash, but Constable Bob turned out to be a very gracious host who tends his home with unparalleled fastidiousness and attention to detail. It was immaculate and so picturesque. See for yourself.









I was served a delicious meal of beef stew that included the following home-made items (and the beef came from a neighbor's cow): strawberry jam, dill pickles, fresh warm wheat bread, and a first for me, pickled herring (surprisingly good). I offered to help clean up, but Bob responded, "Oh no, you sit right there, I've got a wife..." and then proceeded to do all the clean-up himself. His wife Meg was so sweet too, and what a wonderful cook she is. Bob cleaned up in a whirlwind of a rush, and we had just enough time to check out his old baby blue diesel Cadillac before he rushed off to go fishing with Sid. I was invited along, but declined so I could get some laundry done. I was assured I was making a terrible mistake, as they were bound to catch a ten-pounder without me. I'll join them for fishing soon, no doubt. As we were all getting into our repspective vehicles to depart, I could hear an excited voice faintly in the distance, "C'mon, let's go get 'em! There's a bunch of fishies 'bout to die."