We drove the truck to the cabin last weekend. The trail is fairly smooth and it is so much nicer being able to drive in comfort and warmth!
There are so many things to be done, we got started on some of them. I spent Sunday morning and afternoon cleaning the kitchen area. All of the cupboards need de-cluttering and cleaning. I found a new roll of shelf liner that Dad had bought and I got started on cleaning out the cabinets. I started with the dishes, what a hodgepodge of stuff! Alaska glassware at its best!
Once the dishes were organized and new shelf liner installed, I started on the food storage areas. No wonder Dad hadn’t done this yet, it is a little difficult to get way back in there to clean the shelves, especially on the bottom. Being a contortionist or a small child might be helpful for reaching those hidden areas. I found some interesting icons from another era… fruit preserves and jelly from as far back as 1993! I went to visit Dad in ’94, so in theory, this stuff could have been there when I first saw my Dad’s place. Wow!
The kids spent most of the time outside playing.
Girls swinging.
The temps were in the thirties, sun shining, no wind to speak of, it was glorious. Dean got started on finishing the outhouse. He added corner trim and bats on one side and a handle on the inside of the door, next time we’ll finish the rest and hopefully if it is warm enough, put on some stain and sealer. The outhouse is a “two-seater” and is designed for a center wall separating the “pointers” from the “sitters”. The second door still needs to be cut out and the dividing wall finished.
Adding corner trim.
We cut and peeled some Alder and smoked a turkey in the smokehouse for a few hours to give it a nice smoke flavor, then finished it in the over. We ate well that night with coleslaw and potato salad on the side of our barbecued turkey. Pealing Alder was a new experience for me.
Cut and pealed Alder, ready for the smoker. And a Camp Robber looking for a morsel.
Smoking!
I also spent some time working on the braided rag rug that I’m making from Dad’s sweat shirts. It is a work-in-progress. Each time I’m out I get a little more braided and stitched together. So far I have 6 sweatshirts involved. Dad has a couple more out there that I can add to it. It wont be huge, but it will add some color to the floor and a nice place to put your little footsies in the morning! 😉
I have two braided rug projects going on at once now. The other is a T-shirt yarn braided rug that I started last year back in Kansas. Teresa mailed it to me a couple of weeks back and I have started stitching it together. The T-shirt yarn is already braided together, so I’m just stitching the braid, but still it takes time!
I decided to make the braided rug out of Dad’s clothes since some of them weren’t worth wearing, and he had so many, I thought it would be a good way to re-purpose the clothes without sending them to the landfill. Thing 1 has also been up-cycling some of his T-shirts into pillow covers and covers for the chair pads on the metal chairs at the cabin. Waste not, want not!
Alaska on my mind... 