Cabin Weekend Just For the Record

I have an hour here to get this posting accomplished. I have a batch of pictures, and one or two pieces of scribbling. It won't be a beautiful post. It isn't meant to be, either. I just need to get it here for the scrapbook part of this blog.
Please, if you aren't interested in a mishmash of cabin living, stove installation, cats, the north woods, winter, board games, friends, and firewood, this posting isn't for you. Click to a more organized story.
There! You've been warned!
I turned these roses Friday morning. Which is to say that I hung them upside down to dry on an upstairs curtain. Another successful Wal-mart bouquet of roses to enhance our home decor for months to come.

The dear old Jeep is again functional and road worthy. We loaded it with our luggage, food, projects and the hitch haul box, heavy with a stove to install and headed north, late Friday evening. After leaving the main road, we got to the cabin by putting chains on the back tires and then spinning and slewing along through two feet of sugary, fluffy snow. Elv safely ushered our flailing presence through the corridor of tall spruces and brush. It was deeply satisfying and rewarding to land at the front door of the cabin. It would have been a crying shame to have had to sled it all in the last half mile, wouldn’t it?

 We unloaded and got the cookstove fire going for heat. Amy and I fixed beds with clean sheets and piles of blankets by lamp light, first thing. Then while the rest of us hurried off to bed where it was possible to actually get warm, Elv puttered about his stove project till 1:30 in the morning. He was too excited about it to sleep, I guess.

  Our new generator lives in this little shelter next to the outhouse for now. When we are using it, that is. Elv carefully stores it inside the cabin otherwise. It  purrs quietly giving us electricity for hours without ever complaining.    

Grandpa Elv received a letter from grandson Jube.
    He enjoyed your letter so much, Jube. We figured out that you thought of it while you were eating breakfast one morning from the pictures you drew. Your diagram of the volcano was rather interesting, as well as your under water drawings. 
   
 If you know what you are looking for, you can see that two guys are enjoying the "fireplace" on a very cold morning in Minnesota.

The stove is a nice addition to our little cabin in the north woods. We’ve been heating and cooking with a cookstove during our short weekend stays until now. The cookstove works well for cooking and does eventually warm the whole area downstairs and even the sleeping rooms overhead. But having a fireplace (wood stove with glass in the door/screen) facing our comfy couches and stuffed chairs is nicer.

            The two stoves stand back to back in the middle of our open plan space of kitchen, dining, and sitting room areas. The cookstove serves the kitchen side, the heating stove the living room side of things. It is a good arrangement even though the instruction manuals say that the shared chimney idea is a poor one. We’re proving that it can be done, safely and conveniently. It saves expensive pipe and space. Right now, the two stoves stand on raw cement board with nothing decorative or finished about it.The stove pipes, like two arms of an octopus reach from stoves to the ceiling, black and curved at odd angles.

There is a plan to have a hearth on the living room side of field stone or brick that starts at the front of the stove on the floor, spans the space to the wall behind the stove, and up the wall to the mantel piece somewhere just above the highest part of the cookstove. And a hearth for a nestling space for the cookstove, as well, on the other side. The hearths back to back should form one wall with in which the two pipes will be merged into the one chimney. Should be a piece of cake. We've been thinking this over for a long time.

           

Brad and Tim decided to go snowshoeing on Monday morning. It was cold, hard work and Brad came back quite satisfied with sitting by the fire for awhile. 

We have been playing Catan lately when we have a free evening. It has been a long time coming; but this old lady finally figured that she might as well learn how to play. I enjoy playing games around the coffee table with my family, and if they won't play scrabble; then I am going to have to be content with Catan. I'm still trying to figure out how much of winning is luck and how much is skill. I haven't had much of either commodity to date.

Sunday, after church, this happy group of people played Monopoly. It took hours, literally, till it was down to Elv and Tim and Gideon. Tim made the mistake of hitting Elv's boardwalk twice. Elv won the game again. He says that that Tim knows how to play the game well. High praise there, Tim.

Meet Mr. Collins. Yes, the name comes from that genteel personage in Pride and Prejudice. Glad you asked. He presided over our scrapbooking from the heights of Susan's paper files.

Yes, right there behind her left shoulder. She will not be happy that I put this picture here, but how else am I gonna get her back for it?!
Actually, Mr. Collins behaves himself just fine if you don't mind cats. Which I don't, as long as they're in her house, and not in mine.  We scrapbooked for hours together over the weekend. You won't know what that means unless I tell you that it involves long tables set up and our equipment: computers and cricuts,and papers and tools all spread out upon them.With the girls' projects added in we have quite an array. We have visit time and snacks and laughter not to mention the results of our efforts in the end.

I read Myra Scovel's Chinese Ginger Jars over the weekend, as well. I had started Mom Graber's copy when we were down there but left hers there knowing I had my own at the cabin. Scovel's writing prowess is part of the attraction for me, but so is her story of raising a family and being her doctor husband's help suitable for him.  They were there in China during WWII when the Communists took over. Her stories are full of the miracles of Jesus in their extraordinary lives during those days. 

Here you go, Rosie. I know you want to see this. Hope it helps. I also wish to post these pictures because it's our record. All the unfinished splendor thereof for my blogworld to see. Nothing to be proud of, really. But we love this spot and are enjoying the challenge of the journey of doing the finish work. 

Cabin Life

Just a bit of scrap booking here for the record.  We were here and did this: sewing and firewood. That's all.
At the end of the week the church youth came up for a day of hiking. Ha! It rained! So after our shortened hike, we hunted for The Prince of Paris's Hat who had lost it. And they played that "game" called Psychiatrist calculated to make the victim feel like a loser. That's my humble opinion and according to Frank is not shared by the general populace.

Just one more picture. The lovely, little cook stove that Elv installed for me. Cooking and baking with my Happy Meal is satisfaction! It even has a water reservoir that supplies hot water for washing dishes. Happy stuff for me.

Current Events

 Pots of geranium bloom on our doorsteps.  We have had these very plants for five years.  This spring when they were set outside, they didn't get their usual trimming...they looked so nice already. I would advise giving plant food to get these kinds of blooms.  I am a haphazard plant person, so I can't tell you just when it was that I gave them the plant food...during winter. We are enjoying the results.

 The lupines are blooming along Lake Superior just now. Must be seen to be appreciated, properly. I would advise a family jaunt to the north shore one of these next few days.

 The cook stove is installed in the cabin. AND it works. We now have choices: we can cook without cooking ourselves while we cook, or we can open those two front doors and allow it to warm the room. This is a vast improvement over the last stove that was there.

It is a Happy Meal and rightly named. Elv replaced the rotted out fire box with one of his own making.  He made it to include the front opening as the original which makes for smokeless loading. We are so pleased. The heat thermometer works, too. I am all excited about cooking and baking with this stove. Can you tell?

Just a quick over view of Sunday afternoon at the cabin. We had 23 people in our Sunday morning circle. Singing and sharing was great. Herb led the Sunday School class discussion from Proverbs 16. One of the things he said was: Pride is thinking our ways are better. 

On our way home Monday, we stopped along the shore for a few minutes. The fog was moving inland. Lovely, water falls were all along the shore line from the rain we had over the weekend. Gorgeous.

29th Anniversary

It is time to post again. What shall it be?  Well, the purpose of this blog is to update our family and friends. So then, I guess I ought to post the things we've been doing.

Elv and I had our 29th anniversary the beginning of October.  We just got around to taking some time off to vacation and celebrate. Except we worked at the cabin instead of vacationing, really.  There were windows to wash, floors to clean, dishes/kitchen to arrange, trees to remove, brush to clear and weeds to whack. 

We've been told that there is a place on Buck Mountain from which one can see Lake Superior.  One of the projects of this weekend was to find that spot.  Elv took his GPS and we found a trail that seemed to be leading us to the top.  After hiking on this land now for a couple years and always wanting to see this place our anticipation was pretty keen.  We found it! From up there on a clear day (such was the day of our first view), you can see the Splitrock lighthouse on this shore 3 plus miles away and the Apostle Islands miles across the lake. This is a little more than a 1/2 miles hike from the cabin at the end of a very passable hiking trail. 

This picture is for Gabe, Elv says.  Lacking a tractor to pull; Elv decided to put the Jeep to work. Thanks to our friend, Brian, who limbed the trees we had cut down that were too close to the house, we saw the potential in a spruce log. Hopefully some of them will become upright posts and cross beams in the cabin one of these days.
And while we were away, the children had a nice visit with Grandpa Sids. Thanks Dad and Mom for spending Friday with them.  Frances is very happy with the bookcase you built for her, Dad.

The Cabin By The Lake

I have cleaned cabins this week. Tuesday's cabin was built over a hundred years ago. When you drive up through the tree lined lane you see a low lying log structure with four stone chimneys. There are two screened in porches and the front door is fronted by one of these. The door is solid wood planking with a brass knocker and the family crest emblazoned there. No door knob, just an old fashioned barn door handle with a catch. The later generations have added a dead bolt. The door swings open grandly to a huge room with two spacious fireplaces, french doors leading to the other porch that stretches the full length of the house, and a low ceiling of logs and planks. It's dusky in this room always, the only lighting is lamps on stands and two very rustic fixtures with forty watt bulbs in them.
The family has brought to this room deep chairs, rugs, a couch, and all sorts of oddments of coffee tables, lamp stands and the decor of a hundred years of styles.
The mice had the run of the two cabins we cleaned today. The Guest House cabin was the worst. Frances and I vacuumed, scrubbed, and polished for almost two hours to make it welcoming again. Its just a tiny little cabin with white walls, and chinz upholsery. In the sitting room is a Norwegian painting that covers one whole wall. The romantic couple depicted there seem never to tire of smiling into each others' eyes.
The last cabin we cleaned is straight out of a Carol Ryrie Brink book to be sure. There's no running water there unless you count the hand pump outside. And the floors are all slanty in unexpected places. The owners have added new wood to the floors, and the fireplace is fake, but most everything else is authentic cabin stuff.
BTW, Carol Ryrie Brink's son lives on Windigo Lake not too far around the shore from where we cleaned today. Read Brink's book called Winter Cottage. The setting is right here in our area. The two children in the book canoe across three lakes to visit the St. Francis Mission. When the weather is right we can hear the bells at six in the morning and evening from the mission.
Okay, so that was a rambling tale. Come visit us in our own cabin in the woods in Wisconsin. We'll take you fishing if you like or we can sit around a fire all evening and visit.