Rick's Ramblings

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Cabin Day 2, 2013 - Morning Chores

Up at 6:00 again this morning. The dogs just can't seem to adjust to Mountain Time. It was very dark and still outside, even with the near-full moon still in the sky. They needed to pee and took care of that quickly. They also wanted to get under the truck where I had set three large rat traps--baited with small dog biscuits--for the pack rats. No need to fear for the dogs, though. The traps were all sprung (and empty).

Back inside, I started the coffee percolating. And, we both checked our email. By the time the coffee was done the sun was starting to rise. So, we grabbed cameras and stepped outside the back door to snap a few photos. Here are a couple I took. One is the moon above a dead tree (more on dead trees in a future post). One of the sunrise over dead trees.

We made our favorite bran muffins for breakfast.

While eating breakfast, Lynne saw a doe in the meadow to the west of the cabin. So, for the next hour or so we watched Cabin TV while the doe wandered from one tasty treat to the next. We snapped photos, of course.

When she finally left, we took the dogs for a short walk to the top of "poop hill", so named because it is a favorite place (well away from the cabin) for dogs to poop. When we used to come up for weekends with as many as 10 dogs, it was nice to train them to wait until we were on poop hill rather than do their duty close to the cabin where Lynne would dutifully scoop it up. We also walked down to Serenity Point so I could see the trees that have blown down across the trail. I'll try to clear them later if I can get the damned chain saw started.

It was breezy by the time we took our walk. "Breezy" is a local euphamism for "windy as hell". But, the dogs didn't care and the walk did us good. Nice exercise.

It is dry here compared to NJ. And, every year we suffer the same consequences. Dry skin and bloody snot. Just about the time we get used to it, we will head home to muggy land.

The pack rats had left us offerings on the back stoop again. I think Lynne will have photos on her blog. And, when I opened the hood of the truck to check for nests, sure enough, unlike yesterday, there were several nice nests of grass, flowers and sticks. After we've been here for while, they will add dried dog poop to the materials. Oh, and there were four small dog biscuits in there too. I guess the dog treats don't work well as rat bait and are considered valueable decorations instead. New strategy needed tonight.

I think most of you know that the cabin is off-the-grid. We call it our battery-powered house. We have PV panels on the roof that charge a bank of 8 lead-acid batteries in the crawl space. Those batteries drive an inverter that converts 24VDC to 120VAC and powers the house. (We also have a wind-powered generator, but have decommissioned it while we are living in New Jersey.) We rely on several hours of bright sun each day to recharge the batteries and keep us going. I am always looking for ways to reduce our energy usage (including complaining to Lynne about leaving stuff turned on). This year I bought some 13 watt LED lights for our ceiling fixtures. They are quite bright with 750 lumens. Lynne and I manipulated the extensible ladder inside the cabin to replace six 15 watt, 500 lumen bulbs this morning. Wow, lots more light and less electricity usage!

Before I close for the morning and go take my shower, I'd like to reassure people who have asked that we are not impacted by the flooding that has and is occurring in Colorado. While the worst of the flooding is taking place where we used to live in the Loveland / Fort Collins area, it is not an issue for us up here. We did see some flooding along the North Platte river in Nebraska, downstream as far as Roscoe and now we hear it is even further. We saw fields inundated by water and several farms including farm houses and outbuildings in pools of water. So, even hundreds of miles downstream, the disasterous flooding has an impact.

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