Another Beaut'

August 29, 2006 (12:18pm)
73º F, Bright Sun, E wind 3 mph.

Good afternoon,

A really nice day today. The sun is out and the temperature is about right, for me at least. I really have been surprised at the lack of wind for the past few days. Not like this time of year normally. Looks to be this temperature and cooler for a few more days. The geese and flies are flocking up though. The honker populations are making ready for heading south for the winter it appears. The fly populations are making ready for heading inside for the winter it appears. We sure have a lot more flies than geese though. More flies than geese inside fortunately. (Their poop is smaller!)

I had a real hunger for Bible study this morning - in my belly! I had to wait until after 9:00 A.M. before I could eat. We went to the Portside Restaurant in Algoma for our periodic breakfast meeting. My hunger was removed and then some. I had a Portside omelet (pretty much everything but the kitchen sink inside, w/pepper-jack cheese on top) with American fried potatoes and raisin bread. Haven’t had raisin bread for a long time and they make it at the restaurant. Very good with strawberry jam on it. It was more than I should have eaten and I didn’t even have room to help Margriet finish her hash-brown sandwich!

Next week we will start on the book of Revelations. The study is a published one and from the skimming of it today when we got our workbooks, it looks pretty deep. One thing for sure, the print in the workbook is way too small for these old eyes and many others. Not too sure how I am going to handle that, but sure I will figure out something or other. Might have to scan it to the computer and go from there.

While we were up nort’, on Tuesday, we wandered around the countryside a bit in the afternoon. In the late afternoon and early evening, we decided to see what the cities of Menominee and Marinette had to offer for sights. We started out in downtown Marinette, only to find that the downtown is dying. There are many empty, beautiful old buildings, but not many folks. Seems like most of the businesses and folks moved out to the malls that have sprung up at the edges of the city and along the highway. It really is too bad since there are many really solid old buildings there that could use some TLC.

Both Marinette and Menominee were established about the same time and their buildings are of the same era. Marinette is a real contrast Menominee. Menominee has built their downtown on the heritage of it and the river it resides at. One gets the indication right away the river and shoreline were the center of commerce and have been for over 100 years. Then it was sailing ships and now it is pleasure sailing and power boats. Still, the business places are facing the harbor for the most part.

The pictures are of Menominee’s downtown buildings and are in use today. The first appears to be the old firehouse (with a number 1 on the keystone above the large center doorway), now being used as a office building for either a financial business or a law office, I don’t remember which. Behind the "firehouse" and across the street from the other store is the harbor. The space which used to be occupied by the railroad tracks and associated buildings, is now a park with parking and the harbor marina. Parking is the real key I think, to hold folks in the center of the city to do their shopping. It really is an attractive portion of the city.

After walking around, we headed for our "anniversary dinner" at a restaurant I had been to many years ago. I hoped the food would be just as good - and it was excellent! Margriet had veal and I had a small steak, seated at a window looking out on Lake Michigan in northern Menominee. The last time I was there, iceboats were sailing in front of the restaurant on the lake. A bit warmer this time. We enjoyed a very nice and leisurely meal and the company wasn’t too bad either!

I did manage to get the rest of the "ditch" I dug for repair of the waterline filled in yesterday. I also got the rear deck temporarily put back together again enough to use it. I had left part of the structure in place and just removed the deck boards, which were held in place by drive screws. Most of them pulled through the deck boards, so had to remove them from the stringers. I just put a couple of deck screws in each when I replaced them, knowing I will need to remove them a couple of times yet. Eventually I want to close in the deck and make it into a "utility room"/entrance, but have to get the sunporch work done first. Would like to have it finished before winter is over. Lots of work ahead.

Margriet made one of the packages of North Dakota "wild meat" we brought back into a meatloaf for supper last night. That along with some twice baked potatoes sure made for some good eating!!! Surprised there was any leftovers, but she is planning to build some kind of pasta meal with it. We sure do eat high off the hog around here!

Whirlpool sent us some new jets for the range. I installed the burner jets, before we left last week, but Margriet has not let the dad-gum thing cool down long enough for me to install the oven jet and readjust all of them since we got home - until yesterday. The adjustment of the burners was very straight forward and finished in a hurry. As I had the oven almost apart and ready to replace the jet, the power went off. Thought it would off for only a couple of minutes, but after a half hour, called the power company to let them know. I was put on a waiting list, so concluded that there were a lot of other folks without electricity too and hung up. Got out the flashlight and finished the task by battery power. They made a vast difference in the operation of the range. Margriet said the flames looked the same, but the cooking was much different. I could see the difference, but I have been probably looking at more flames on gas ranges than she has. ;-)

So ....Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

Picnic Time!

August 28, 2006 (5:18am)
55º F, Cloudy, NNE wind 3 mph.

Good morning,

Grace Lutheran Church’s annual picnic is now history. It was a good one with a lot of good food. I, like a lot of folks, ate too much. The sweet corn was probably the best we have had in many years. Perfect! There were a lot of desserts this year, more than normal I think. Of course I had to check the quality of several of them. Lots of salads also and I did check many of them too. Margriet prepared a salad and finally we had the correct portion to bring - came home with an empty bowl. She also baked bread on Saturday, so we brought one along and it too disappeared along with an Irish soda bread we cut and put out.

The service was also held outside on a beautiful, sunny and warm day. Conditions could not have been more perfect. A pretty good crowd showed up too. Even a dog was in attendance! One of the members was heading out from church to another party or some such, and didn’t want him to be in the hot car. He behaved himself pretty well too. A couple of years ago I was after Pastor to get off of the pulpit and get among the congregation to deliver his sermon, also give up reading it. Yesterday he finally did. His wife was worried that he would talk too long, but as it turned out, the service was shorter than recent services. I don’t think the pulpit is necessary any longer with the ability now to be heard electronically. Don’t need to be higher than the congregation and shout down to them. Hope it continues. Now if I can convince him to let the congregation pray on their own during the prayers of the people. Now it is prayers to the people.

The reason for the company town of Fayette, Michigan was the two furnaces, in the first picture, producing pig iron. The first furnace on the left and the later furnace, 1870, were the biggest producers of pig iron in the U.S. at the time. Walking around and in them gives one the scale of the work just to build them, let alone the operation of producing pig iron. The original furnace was destroyed in a fire, and both of these also experienced fires, but were repaired and returned to production again. The rebuilding of them also allowed them to be improved and reduce the possibility of further fires. Still it appears to be a very dangerous occupation.

The two almost attached buildings (actually three sided buildings a couple of feet away from the furnaces themselves) on either side of the furnaces, are the pouring rooms where the molten iron was tapped and poured into pigs of about 100# each. It must have been fun working in them during the summer, even if it was in Upper Michigan on the lake shore! The cover to the upper right of the furnaces, shelters the two steam boilers necessary to operate the various machinery for the furnace. It also was the site of the well for the furnaces and the community. Folks had the luxury of water pumped to various points around the town, pumping their needed water into bucket to carry home. There were several hand pumps around the community for the folks to use. One of the chores for the children living there - getting water.

Two other elements, besides iron ore brought in by rail, are charcoal and limestone. This spot was chosen because of the huge hardwood forests in the area and the limestone cliffs the operation was built at the base of. The second picture shows one of the "beehive" charcoal ovens. When the production was at it’s height, there were 88 of these burning to the to the left of the furnaces in the first picture. This is the only one that was reconstructed and there is a part of one of the originals on display. They are rather large, some up to nearly 40' in diameter and 30' high. This one was only about half of that size. Walking into it, one again got a sense of how huge things were. It was really eery walking inside too, thanx to the hard walls causing weird acoustics and the limited light entering through the opening and vents. When the operation closed, the hardwood forests were completely cut for miles around and they were starting to import hardwood from other areas and building beehives in other areas.

The third picture shows the limestone kiln, used to breakdown the raw limestone from the cliffs alongside of it. The cliffs are now hidden by birch trees which have since grown up where the cliff face was moved back. There are still markings and broken drills in the rock face from the work done before the operation closed down. The cliff face is more than 100' high and I can’t imagine working on it to break out the stone into smaller pieces to use in the kiln and ultimately in the furnaces. The kiln is fairly small, compared to the iron furnaces, but the wooden timbers used are better than a foot in cross-section, probably 35' long.

My impression is that it really was hard work there and fairly hard times for most of the folks. But I also bet they knew how to have a good time too! Michigan seems to be very committed to keeping their history alive and doing a pretty good job of it too.

Saturday I introduced Margriet to tamales. The last supply run we made, on the return from our adventure up nort’, Aldi’s had some in their frozen food department. I have talked about them several times and have not had any for many years. These were made the right way, wrapped in corn husks as the Mexicans do, and relatively inexpensive, so talked her into trying them. I prepared dinner with them, along with guacamole and some tortilla chips. Apparently she liked them as she ate two! It was some interesting to buy them from Aldi’s as it is a German company. Seemed out of place to me for some reason. Margriet had a hard time trying to decide if we should have beef or chicken tamales! Of course she chose the chicken. They really were pretty good - for store bought. Might have them again.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

The day after our return!

August 26, 2006 (5:28am)
67º F, Cloudy with fog, E wind 1 mph.

Good morning,

So it is the day after our return. It rained off and on all day yesterday for an accumulation of a little less than an inch in the previous 24 hours. Nice rain, but not nice to do much outside. Didn’t really want to take a shower while tromping in the mud.

Margriet managed to do a load of wash and to bake a couple of Irish soda breads for the rummage sale at church today. Then breads looked very good, but since the did, I couldn’t test their quality! They will arrive at church this morning and hopefully sell to add some money to the coffers. The money being raised is to help a member family. Ron has terminal cancer through almost every part of his body. He will be leaving a wife and teenage son. We don’t expect him to live much longer, but the bills continue to pile up. The youth group has also had a couple of brat fries in a couple of area grocery stores to add to the total collected too. Ron and his family were very good to me during the divorce process.

The first picture (including rain drops on the camera lens) is of the company hotel in Fayette, Michigan ( www.michigan.gov/fayettetownsite and http://www.sos.state.mi.us/history/museum/musefaye/kidsatfa.html ). The hotel is in the process of some reconstruction and preservation. The interior has several of the areas restored and are rather elegant. At least more elegant than I expected in a company iron town. Even in the 1800's. Not only the interior has been worked on, but also the structure. Much of the work is visible and probably will stay that way for folks to see how the "old-time" construction differs from today’s. Of course it is interesting to me.

The second picture shows the back of the hotel. There are two additions to the original hotel. I suspect the left wing was added before the right, as it has a porch on it facing a wall of the right wing about six feet away. We didn’t go into them or upstairs. These old legs of mine have trouble going down the steep stairways. There was not such thing as handicapped accommodations at that time.

The real reason I took the picture was the two doors on the back of the additions. At one time the opened to a covered bridge to two-story outhouses! I don’t know if there are plans to rebuild them or not, but I really think they should. Would be interesting and I don’t know of any others, but suspect there were. Bet it was an experience (maybe adventure would be a better word) in the wintertime to use them. No indication what the "downstairs" guests used. There were many outhouses through out the area close to each house. Didn’t see any indications of them near the work or business sections of the town.

Walking around the residential area (now heavily wooded and overgrown) we did see some wildlife, but not really much. Most people today would have a dog, or possibly an attack parakeet, to protect their property from intrusion. But we found one old house that had a snake in the doorway! Not too sure if it works or not, but if it is seen, should give some folks a start for sure. The sun had come out by the time we saw it and it was totally relaxed, sleeping in the sun, not acting wild at all. We also saw a doe with her fawn. At first I could not figure out why it didn’t bolt, but finally saw the fawn, that she was keeping herself in front of. It was a neat sight and they walked with us for some distance, very observant of us and rather slowly, until she found a spot to go up the steep bank behind the houses. Cool!

We have been searching the web for the Fayette State Park and it’s history. There is a lot! We missed a bunch of stuff and need to go back again some day. There also is another museum, not too far away, relating to the iron industry and mining in the U.P. That will have to wait for another trip up there, but it is on our "list" of things to see.

Our kit is pretty well cleaned up, organized, re-supplied, and put away ready for our next adventure. Probably next year from the looks of it. Have some maintenance to do on the van and around here. Then it will be time to get serious about finding some sharp instruments and beat on some dead trees. Hopefully it will result in enough firewood for the winter. There are a lot of other things to do before winter comes here too. Seems te 2-DO list continues to get longer!

Kewaunee has a new gas station under construction. Actually it is an E-85 station. Wonder how it will be received, other than the price being about a dollar less than gasoline in other areas of the state. The price of gasoline when we returned was 5¢/gallon higher than when we left. but since has dropped again and one station has dropped an additional 5¢/gallon yesterday. Wonder if the rest will follow suit. Hope so. Then just another $2.00/gallon to make me a bit less grumpy. Not!

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

Our Annual Ride

August 25, 2006 (5:52am)
65º F, Rain, NE wind 11 mph.

Good morning,

Where were you at 2:00 P.M. on August 22nd in 2003? I was getting married to my Dutch Woman. Well, we decided to celebrate that event by doing some bumming. My original intent was to "surprise" Margriet and just head out after packing our suitcase, but she brought it up a day or so before. Of course I fainted ignorance of remembering our anniversary, which she finally figured out on along the way. I again had made arrangements to miss Bible study with a couple of unnoticed (by Margriet) emails.

My original plan was to head to Marinette, Wisconsin/ Menominee, Michigan to snoop around, then off to Wabeno, Wisconsin and the Camp 5 logging museum and antique railroad. Well .... We made it to Marinette/Menomonie, but not too Camp 5. The weather has some say in that. After watching the weather from Marinette, the rains were supposed to be rather heavy there, so looking at the map we went to Fayette Historic State Park, around the horn a bit (125 miles) to the east, located near Garden, Michigan. The alternate turned out to be a very good choice.

Fayette turned out to truly be the highlight of our annual ride. It was a very good alternate choice. Fayette is the reconstruction, and preservation of a mid 1800's company town. The town was built to support an iron smelting operation, which had something over 500 people living there. Parts or all of many buildings still stand and are being stabilized and reconstructed on a small bay along the north end of Lake Michigan. Since there were huge supplies of limestone and iron ore in the area, along with hardwood forests to make charcoal from, it was a perfect place to set up the operation.

The original log cabins for the laborers are long gone, but one has been constructed to give you the idea of what they were like. The construction is far better than the originals, but the interiors are pretty much what they would have looked like. These were houses for the poorest of the folks living there. There also were many frame homes, mostly two story, for the more skilled worker families. Each style of home and occupants, has it’s own neighborhood and the houses clustered together on their own "streets" on the pinnacle. The better homes were along the lakeshore and the cabins were in the woods. The really "upper class" had very nice homes and very well equipped. All were very interesting to go through and wonder what the stories were the walls could tell.

The town is (was) very complete, containing everything for life there. But it still was a company town, so everything was controlled by the Jackson Iron Company. It even had their own railroad complete with 6 miles of track and roundhouse to service the furnaces. There also was an opera house where the town’s coronet orchestra played a weekly concert. In all there were at one time over 100 buildings in the town. Seeing the old company store, blacksmith shop, rail shop, doctor’s home, and all of the other necessary services of a normal town is really interesting. I probably will be looking up more about the operation and the efforts to restore it. Michigan really does a good job in a measured and ordered way with their history. We spent 3+ hours there and could have spent a lot more. Our bodies wore out a bit though going up and down the hills.

We did find a couple of very nice motels and cities. We had stayed in the motel in Marinette a couple of years ago when we were there. We were pleasantly surprised by the cost being about $10.00 less than indicated on the web. Like that! It has improved and is in the process of being improved more. They are redoing a few rooms at a time with new paint and carpet, plus updating the furniture in it. It was a good choice to spend the night and celebrate in. Of course we brought our required bottle of Algoma sweet cherry wine along to toast the next 30 years of marriage.

Our second night was spent in Escanaba, Michigan at another very nice motel. While chewing on a Belgian waffle at their breakfast, we met a couple from Frankfurt, Germany. They were on vacation and traveling in a bit of the U.S. and Canada. Margriet had a chance to practice her German and had a good time chatting with them. I think they did also. The morning before, as I was loading the van getting ready to go, there were a couple of boys, about 10 and 12 years old, waiting for their Dad to open the door for them. I said, "Good morning." They didn’t say anything, but went to their Dad. I think they too were German, with my untrained ear. They I am sure asked their Dad what I had said and he told them. I didn’t need to speak German to understand their intent! Cool! Oh yes - the waffle was good too!

Today it looks like rain for most of the day. Time to get out "kit" cleaned up an put in order again for our next adventure. Probably should pay a couple of bills too. We got home something after 3:00 P.M. yesterday and didn’t do much, other than empty the van, take a nap, and go for cheap chicken at Birchwood. It was very tired out so seemed to just "set" for the evening mostly.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

It's RAINING out!! Not supposed too!

August 19, 2006 (10:54am)
63º F, Light rain, N wind 7 mph.

Good morning,

The rain sure messed up our plans for today. A couple of hours ago, I was getting ready to head to church and clean up the remains of a tree I cut down yesterday and Margriet had just put a load of wash in the machine. Instead - it started to rain! Planned to work outside most of the day, but now that appears to be only a half day at best.

There was a dead medium sized tree, about 12" across the stump, toward the front of church which needed to come down. I told the Property Team leader several weeks ago I would take it down for the firewood. It was when the really hot weather set in, then we went bumming, and this past week I have been working on the water supply. So ... I finally got to it yesterday. Taking it down was the easy part. Cutting it up was a bit more stressful, especially for my left shoulder. I must have really messed something up in the shoulder when I was slapped around by a tree a couple of years ago. If I had to cut anything above my waist, there was some real pain in the front of the shoulder. Didn’t like that one bit. I did manage to buck it up into 4 foot lengths and drag the branches away, but I had it by then. Planned to go back this morning and rake up the little junk this morning. Probably get after it this afternoon instead. At least there is a few days supply of wood on the log pile to be cut and split now.

Margriet put a load of laundry in yesterday and wanted to do the heavy, jeans type, laundry today. Well, at the moment it is washed, but wet! Hope she will be able to hang it out this afternoon to dry. The load has most of my work clothes in it and I really had to do some scratching to find something to wear today.

I did manage to go along the driveway and cut off all the intruding brush and trees. I can say for certain, that we will have a lot of wild roses and wild grapes next year. At least the plants. The wild raspberries are also doing very well. The roses are the worst to work with as they have very sharp, long thorns on them that tend to break off after they have embedded themselves into my meat! They do irritate a lot. While I was out cruising the other day, I noticed there were a lot of deer beds in the weedy areas too. That is a good sign. Maybe we will have a good crop of young this coming year.

The water system seems to be holding rather well. No leaks - yet. Hope we don’t have any either. I have been rather dubious about it, especially since it went together rather easily, after getting it figured out and dug up. I will wait a few more days before closing all of my digging up again, then I will insulate it for the cooler part of the year. Probably will replace some of the vapor barrier too. I also have to do some repair on the skirting at the base of the house. When the original structure was installed, they didn’t use treated wood, so it is pretty rotten. I have some "leftover, used" treated lumber to use for the task.

We are pulling double duty at church tomorrow. Margriet and I are communion assistants and I also have to bring snacks for after the service. Margriet baked a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, following a recipe from my Aunt Julia we found in a 1934 cookbook put together by the women of my Uncle Carl’s church in Avoca, Iowa when he was Pastor there. They taste rather good, but discovered that we should have used the "old-fashioned" oatmeal rather than the "quick-cooking" variety we had on had. Never gave that a thought - until all were baked. The cookie dough was more like batter. Oh well, they taste good.

The price of crude oil has been dropping on the world market and now I see it also is in Green Bay. Now down to $2899/gallon there. It still is $2.999/gallon the last time I saw in here. Hope it will follow suit and drop more - like maybe $2.00/gallon. Probably not in my lifetime! Oh for the good-old-days when you could get 5 gallons for a buck - and that was the normal price!

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

It's dripping again.

August 17, 2006 (5:11pm)
68º F, Wet clouds, SSW wind 4 mph.

Good afternoon,

Wahoo!! We have a non-leaking water supply again! Finally got everything put together and it appears (crossing fingers, eyes, and toes) nothing is leaking. I have been some skeptical about the project being completed correctly. It has been a rather long time since I have sweated copper waterlines together. I purposely waited until this morning to start the last stage of things, so I could get something from the store if I needed it - I did!

Got out the Bernz torch last night to get ready. I discovered the tank was empty, so got another from my supply (thanx to my Dad and I think there is still 3-4 more left, dated 1970!) and put it on this morning. When it came time to light the torch, it wouldn’t work right. Ugh! Into Algoma to get a new one from the hardware store there. I really was some surprised at the cost, about half of what I expected to pay. That is a good thing.
Actually the opening of the old waterline went a lot easier than I thought it would. One end needed to remove the flare fitting on the end of the copper line and then remove a half dozen of the various pieces of pipe fittings attached to it. All opened and came off reasonably easily. The only real problem was trying to get adequate leverage to get the wrenches to swing. Could not use my really big wrenches, so had to apply more pressure in very awkward positions. I already can feel my shoulders and expect they will really be talking to me in the morning. Of course I did get something of a shower in the process too.

The other end needed to be cut and a fitting sweated on. That was the part that worried me. It did go rather well, even though it was not fun to do in such a confined space. The connection was made in a trench I had dug to get at the point of connection. I had to sweat a reducer onto the line and it really went well - on the first try!
Once both ends were open and prepared, all I needed to do was put the pex in-between. I pulled the old line out and in the process, broke off a drop I put on a cold water plastic line, to add future lines. Fortunately I had a supply of plastic fittings and was able to repair that too. When the line came out of the house, I found that apparently it has broken once before and repaired with a rubber sleeve and a couple of hose clamps. I think that is the place it was leaking, but have not had a chance to really look over the line.

Now that the water supply is connected again, I will wait a few days, just to make sure there really are not leaks in it. If there are none, I will then insulate it, probably with a few inches of ridged blue board. I also will leave the crawl space open for a while to dry out the crawl space and the soil under it. My dislike of playing in clay mud has been reinforced and want to prevent that from happening again - anytime soon.

I did find that the pex piping system is very easy to use. Easier than I thought it would be. I will slowly lay in a supply of pipe and fittings. As I find the need to repair/replace things, I will replace them with the pex. I really like how clean the system is, compared to all the fittings and joints in either copper, iron, or PVC. It sure cuts down on the possibility of making a mistake or having a leak. It is also easier to isolate a problem within the system too.

Watching the news and the various episodes of planes, &c., being diverted or evacuated, I found the BBC website ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/ ) is usually the first to report on it. That really surprised me, since I normally hear that FOX or CNN is always first on news stories. Guess not. The BBC usually has more detail too, and more accurate. We monitor the BBC website for European news (wonder why) most of the time, just to keep up.

The beautiful days came to and end when the rain, light, came this afternoon instead of Friday night. Guess it will be back for Friday too. I was just finishing up, when it started to rain lightly. So far only enough to settle the dust and get me a bit wet. We really need the rain and it is a nice slow rain shower passing through every once in a while.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

A nudder beautiful day!

August 16, 2006 (12:32pm)
71º F, Blue skies, S wind 8 mph.

Good afternoon,

A nudder beautiful day! Temperature is just right, wind is just right, sun is just right. Back to "normal" Wisconsin weather for the past almost wee. The only rain predicted is for late Friday night or early Saturday morning. Hooray!!!

One of the "closed" site we visited, but were able to walk around was Fort Abercrombie just west of the North Dakota/Minnesota state line. The propaganda we read, indicated a few buildings and a museum were on the grounds. They are, but closed. We were able to look into the magazine windows, but that is about it. Not much in there, but it looked like it also served as the fort’s brig. There were no windows in the blockhouses, for obvious reasons, but we were able to walk around the grounds. All of the fort’s buildings are marked with signs and posts at the corners. The fort sits on a cliff overlooking the river, so only had palisades on three sides, the fourth being the cliff. The real problem for the fort at the moment is that mother nature is moving the cliff face into the grounds of the fort, causing much of it to fall into the river. Would be nice if they would stabilize the edge and possibly reconstruct the part already gone.

After spending some time walking around, we headed east again and ended up in Fergus Falls, Minnesota for the night. It also meant that we went farther east than I thought, proving to mess up some other plans farther down the road. Most importantly stopping at the Pioneer Village in Barron Wisconsin.
Day before yesterday I went into the outhouse and noticed there was a twig sticking out of my hard hat hanging from the nail on the wall. What I found was a bird had started to build a nest in it. The hard hat was filled equal length twigs, about 6" long and a little over c" in diameter. They looked like the bird had measured each one. I don’t know when the nest was started, but sure am glad the bird was not stuck in the outhouse for the time we were traveling.

Yesterday I went cruising through part of our woods. The object was to look over which trees I could cut down for firewood. I marked them with spray paint. It is difficult to tell which is a live tree and a dead/dying one when none of the trees have leave on them and the show is a foot deep. I don’t think I will run out of trees to cut this winter. Or firewood for this year either. There are a number of trees that need to come down. Probably will cut those closest to the driveway first, so they don’t drop on the driveway unless I want them to. Most are blue ash, so should make a fairly good fire. There are a couple of birch trees too, but not many. Both grow only so long, then die a natural death.

I am making some substantial progress on our water supply. I have both ends now exposed and ready to fit new pex water pipe in. The really hard part, really two, was getting rid of the water so I could expose a "clean" section of the copper line to cut and then solder the new fittings onto. The problem was is the line continues to leak water from it, filling the hole I dug around the line! I finally dug a small ditch about 30' long to drain off the water and let it run on the lawn. The ditch is about a foot deep on at the beginning.

The other problem was cleaning a copper line that has been buried in clay for many years. That stuff really stuck to the copper. I finally did, using a sanding belt from my belt sander instead of a strip of emery paper. It really worked well, not only because it was rougher, but it allowed me to have finger loops to pull it back and forth. Much easier than a strip with two ends! It also was a challenge to work in a ditch about a foot deep and wide, laying on my belly in a crawl space.

Tomorrow morning I will cut the line at both ends and solder in the new fittings for the pex on one end and mechanical fittings on the other end. I fastened one end of the pex to a union. My first pex joint and it really was easy to accomplish. Much easier than I thought it would be. I don’t want to start it this afternoon, incase I need to run and get something to complete the job, only to find the stores closed. A full day is better than half a day. The water will need to be off and disconnected while I am working on it. Don’t want to do that over night.
Going into the outhouse this morning, when opening the door at the other end, a mouse ran across the floor and into an electric winch laying on the floor. It is the first sign I have seen of mice in there. I did put out some viddles for it to dine on. Hope it likes it! The flies are also starting to accumulate everywhere too, so I guess the cooler season is about to come. Followed by the white season.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

Damp and Beautiful

August 14, 2006 (2:37pm)
76º F, Sunny and nice, NW wind 14 mph.

Good afternoon,

So .... I will try this again. I had it mostly written during the noon break, then hit the wrong button and it went bye-bye! To make matters worse, the program also asked if I wanted to save it before dumping and I clicked "No!" I was trying to put the pictures in and had one I didn’t want. Thought that was the series of buttons I was clicking - oops!

After leaving Sue and Don’s, the idea was to visit some historical sites in southeastern North Dakota on the return home. First on the agenda was White Hill Battlefield southwest of LaMour. When we arrived, after a very long gravel road, we found it was closed, only open on the weekends. We were able to walk around the grounds and did learn a bit about the significance - but not much.

The first picture is taken from the small museum, not open, shows the wide open space of the area. It was a long, but not unpleasant walk up to the monument, with a small rest shelter near the top. The museum was in a small shelter, built of logs and stone, by the CCC in the 30's. It is in surprisingly good shape for it’s age, but does look old. We really would have liked to see in the museum. Maybe next time we will plan to be there on the weekend!

The monument itself is rather impressive and dedicated to the Iowa and Nebraska Calvary which fought the Indians at the site. I don’t know what the fight was about. Maybe someday we will learn about it. There sure could be better care take of the monument. There are all kinds of green/gray/blue things growing on the stonework. I suspect it is some kind of lichen, fungus, or some such. Irregardless, it needs a good cleaning. The stone work is also showing it’s age and maybe some kind of stabilized/preservative could be applied. Don’t really know much about those kind of things.

As you can see from the last picture, the green crops have been replaced by open grasslands, more or less, and the trees have been replaced by cattle. While the countryside changes all along our trek from FISKLAND, it seems there is almost a line where the crops end and the cattle begin, for the most part. If you look closely at the water hole, the water seems to be about four feet below "normal." We saw many water holes, ponds, and rivers either dry or with only puddles in them and a lot of mud. It is entirely a different world for sure. For us, it is a nice thing to see, but would not really like to live there by choice.

We went to two other historic sites, but they too were closed. One we could not even walk around. We gave up on the fourth site, as we assumed it too would be closed and the price of fuel was rather high. We had put on a lot of miles (not hard to do out there) between sites already - enough is enough. We did enjoy the views along the way, so I guess it was worth the ride. The state power companies are also putting up wind turbines to produce electricity on the grasslands. They have a lot more there than here, but the system they are using looks very much as the systems here. Wisconsin will have a lot of them in the future as more and more are being built. Some are talking of putting them out in Lake Michigan too.

Green Bay experienced their first death of a firefighter on the job yesterday afternoon. It is an old fire department too. Apparently two were battling the blaze inside of a house when they fell through the floor into the basement. One, a gal, managed to scramble out, but the other didn’t. He was a 20+ year veteran, scheduled to be promoted on Thursday Lieutenant. The department will bring forward the promotion which probably means a boost in the benefits for the widow and his three daughters. The chief said they are in the habit of saving folks, not losing them. It has really hit the rest of the department hard.

Church was pretty filled yesterday. It was ice-cream Sunday with all kinds of build-it-yourself sundaes being built and eaten after the service. I don’t think that really was the reason for the good sized crowd though. I think Pastor enjoyed it most of all there though. I did have to chuckle at his sermon. The trip to the Holy Spirit Conference caused him to hear part of the message I tried to give him several months ago. He refused to listen to me then. Guess you really do have to be 50 miles from home before folks really will listen to you! Anywho, mission accomplished.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

Wonderful Wisconsin Weather!

8/12/06, 12:10 pm.
67º F, Bright Sunshine, SSE wind 6 mph.

Good afternoon,

The weather has been exceptional since arriving home. The sun is out and it is in the temperature range we really like - mid to low 70's for highs. The overnight low did surprise us some, especially in the north and west of here where it almost touched the 30's overnight. Sounds as if we will be getting some rain Sunday night through Monday at least.

I went uptown yesterday to get the mail and refill may medications. While we did get a couple of bills, nothing to really worry about. The phone company still insists that we have a credit, but we cannot find how or where, so are taking no chances and paying the current usage amount. As soon as we don’t pay it, they probably will find it though. Don’t want to lose phone service. I also noticed the price of gasoline was all over the place, at least for the only four stations we have in town. One had a price of $3.059/gallon, two had a price of $3.129/gallon, and the fourth had $3.149/gallon shown. Not sure what the reason is, but we paid $3.129/gallon when we put some in at Green Bay. We didn’t fill it, betting on the price going down, but enough to get around for a couple of weeks.

After leaving the Holy Spirit Conference, we more or less made a bee-line for North Dakota. Out of the Twin Cities, we followed State highway 55 rather than the Interstate system. It meant a few less miles, but probably a bit more time, although I was surprised how fast we did make the journey. The road was in excellent shape and a very nice drive. It was interesting to see the smaller towns along the way and to watch as the terrain changes as we drive west - from a very tree covered and occasionally hilly landscape to one of being very open and reasonably flat. We could see the edge of the earth and didn’t want to get there only to fall off of the edge! I really was surprised to see how many acres are planted in soybeans this time, rather than the corn and grain of the past. Times are changing and so are the profit centers I guess.

When lunch time came, we were at Breckenridge, Minnesota at the North Dakota border and time to look for a park. I spied a sign directing us to a city park, which turned out to also be the county fair grounds. In many respects, it is an old-fashioned style fair grounds. It still offers folks a place to camp or picnic during the rest of the year! It was a very pleasant stop for us, right along the banks of the Red River, also the headwaters. I think it probably is the only fair grounds I have ever seen which has a church on the grounds! A little old-fashioned, white, Little House on the Prairie style church.

The reason for the city park was the celebration of the first permanent settlement that far west in the 1850's. The settlers arrived in January and built the first cabin in February of the same year. I can’t imagine, building a cabin at that time of year, let alone traveling by horse/oxen pulled wagon at that time of year. They must have had a lot more Norwegian blood in their systems then I do! Logs are hard to cut into building materials when they are frozen, with axes and hand saws. I have found it nearly impossible to use a drawknife on a wet/green frozen log here! Wonder how "tight" the cabin was. Must have been fun to mix mud with straw and water and keep it from freezing before using it for chinking!

We did make it to LaMour in good shape and Sue had a beef roast and a buffalo roast in the oven for supper, along with the promise of sending some "wild meat" along home with us. We never say no to that kind of an offer. Sue must have thought we brought our tape worms along with us as there was way too much very good food. We had our fill and then some. It really was good to "chew the fat" with her again. We arrived Sunday afternoon and left Tuesday morning. Monday afternoon/evening we drove to Fargo to pick up Don. A nice ride and a good meal too.

I noticed a some tire tracks on the lawn yesterday while starting to cut the lawn. I think it was a crew from the power company, trimming trees around the power lines. This morning I noticed there was a smallish birch tree log next to the driveway, left for me to use for firewood. I sure will! They didn’t cut any trees on our property, stopping at the property line. Expect I will see them in the near future to trim ours, but there really isn’t that much to do. They just might wait until the next time they come through. Hope so.

I did get some of the lawn cut yesterday and Margriet got a bunch of laundry done. The environmentally friendly solar dryer worked extremely well with the added breeze and low humidity. I also got out my asbestos paper and wrote a long letter to the corporate headquarters of the motel we stayed at in the Twin Cities, complaining about the motel. Not sure if it will do any good, but at least they know our feelings.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><

Home again.

8/11/06, 6:17 am.
62º F, Mostly Sunny, SE wind 9 mph.

Good morning,

We are home again. With the odometer on the van shows an additional 1,621.3 miles on it as we accomplished our two major goals - stopping to see Don and Sue in LaMour, North Dakota and the Holy Spirit Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Along the way, we intended to see some of the history and sights along the trail. We had a pretty good trip, learned a lot, and ate too much.

Don and Sue seem to be thriving in their work. The two churches of course are their major task and joy, but they are also becoming more involved in community life also. They have a really nice parsonage, better than most I have been in, and enjoy it muchly. Don was not there when we arrived, as he was in Arkansas sending one of his sons off to Iraq for deployment. It was a good excuse to go to Fargo to pick him up from the airport. Also a good excuse to stop at a Mexican restaurant for a meal. Don continues to keep busy with his wine and beer production and Sue with her quilting activities. They are a couple of very busy folks and like it that way.

The Holy Spirt Conference was awesome! We arrived early afternoon on Wednesday, 2nd, and checked into the motel. We arrived earlier than I thought we would, which was a good thing. We had little trouble finding the motel, but it didn’t turn out to be as good as our past experience with the chain. It is not on our list of motels to return to. After unpacking and getting some settled in, we headed for the Conference and the opening worship service. Some problems getting there, but nothing to the problems returning to the motel. WE discovered the name of one necessary had three different identifying numbers on it, for the portion we needed to travel. We left the motel traveling on 73rd street and turned off of County Highway H2, with it being called Ramsey County 8 in-between! We didn’t realize the change and on the return, kept looking for 73rd Street! After a very long, scenic (but not able to enjoy it in the dark of night) back, we did find our bed to sleep in eventually.

The conference caused information and spiritual overload in these two old folks. There were awesome worship celebrations, wonderful communion services, and some really great speakers. Only one speaker was less than we expected - more of self and less of subject at hand. There was so much information to absorb that it just is impossible to get it all between our ears. We did buy a bunch of tapes so we can listen to them over and over again to glean it all. Don’t think that will really happen though. We also acquired a few more books for our over supplied shelving. Some of the books we wanted were sold out before we could get them. We will have to find them online sometime and possibly order them.

The worship services were filled with wonderful music. The host church’s choir did an outstanding set of numbers and the "house" musical group added a great deal to the experience. The children really had a ball as there were allowed and encouraged to dance and wave flags around the sanctuary. They did with great abandon. We all sang ourselves horse and enjoyed the experience very much. I noticed that there were more white hairs in the pews, or at least those our age with hair yet. They, like us, were sitting down more than the rest of the folks though. All had their toes tapping and keeping up with the music and one way or another. The "sermons" were long, 1½-2 hours, and something any good Lutheran is not used to. Some were carried over from one day to the next.

There also were breakout sessions in the afternoon. There were way too many for us to attend and they were not repeated. We did attend some of them, but there were more we would have liked to. The answer is getting the tapes. We also found it necessary to go back to the motel during the afternoon for a fiver, missing additional breakout sessions. The nights were long and we knew we would not make it through the entire night. We also managed to sleep later than normal, thanx to the late nights.

One evening we ate with those who came from Grace (seven of us) at a Mongolian Barbeque. It was something new for us and we enjoyed it very much. Megan, Howard and Marsha’s daughter, made the choice = she done good! We also found another restaurant on our own - the Taste of Scandinavia (http://www.tasteofscandinavia.com/) - which was excellent too. We ate there on more than one occasion. In many ways it is very much like the restaurants we ate at in Europe, but with a fast food like order counter. The first time we ate there, we made the mistake of sitting next to the pastry showcase. Not a good idea if one wants to concentrate on the food in front of them!

We intended to stop at several historic sites in North Dakota, only to find that North Dakota is only old on the weekends. After stopping at three and finding them closed, we headed east again. We were able to walk around one, but we were the only people there! Kind of a disappointment, since they were some distance apart and the prices of gas is high these days. Even one site in Wisconsin was closed!

The fuel prices continue to be outrageous and got to be outrageous-er along the way. When we left the price was $3.099/gallon, when we arrived in Minneapolis the price was $2.899/gallon, but went up to $3.199/gallon over night before dropping back to $2.999/gallon. We saw a high of $3.219/gallon in northwestern Wisconsin! It is only $3.129/gallon here. Crazy! I think our traveling is over for the year.

Hopefully I will add to this and our trip, even with pictures maybe, on subsequent editions to this.

Time to get the day a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><