Not to be discouraged .......

Well, it's Sunday again and time for the blog. I have decided not to start off bemoanly, complaining about lack of resources slowing progress or bad weather delaying things. Easter Monday, of course, was a holiday for everyone except me and so I made good use of it uncovering the foundation holes for the decking to allow them to start to thaw out and clearing up some of the mess left over from last week.

My Contractor had an industry show/exhibition to attend at the end of the week, where he had a stand to advertise his company and what they can do. Therefore, the crew spent Tuesday and Wednesday building new exhibits and refurbishing old ones and on Thursday they all travelled up to Fort McMurry, I think, to attend the show. I'll find out how it all went when they get back next week. Talking to my neighbours, my experience with my Contractors is not unusual - for BC.

So I was alone on the site this week. I spent it digging ice and rocks out of the decking foundation holes that I started airing on Monday and doing all those small jobs that I have been putting off because they were either too tedious or too difficult to do at the time. Often these have been little things that went wrong at the time of doing them in the first place and I said 'I'll fix that later when I've got the time (and the inclination)'. Well, there was no shortage of inclination and I certainly had the time and no excuses not to get them done. Actually, they were quite satisfying and the opportunity do get them done was fortunate because some of them needed doing before more progress can be made. I lost one day due to bad weather.

I have decided to spare you the photos of clean foundation holes, replaced lag bolts and log screws etc and have decided to give you a look at some of the larger jobs undertaken this week.

I cut a 'jack' rafter for the 'dodgy' valley but, it was too heavy to hold in place with one hand and secure with the other. So putting it in place will have to wait until the team comes back and until then it is sitting, waiting, on the scaffolding.

Using the chain saw, I trimmed the end of the beam coming in from the bonus room above the garage. A rafter will come down from above it and a stud wall will go up beneath the beam and contain a stud post to support it, at which point the temporary post (on the right) can be removed.

I also put in the thin strip you can see here. Previously, there had been support only under the joists, where the vertical lines of nails are, but building codes require solid wood along the whole length. Putting the new strip in was easy. Getting the old, smaller, supports out, which were nailed from top and bottom, was the difficult bit.

The bonus room from above.

Looking the other way.

And out over the second bedroom.

As it was raining, I decided to take my admin day on Thursday this week. That freed up the weekend for doing some more kitchen and bathroom research and I took Saturday off to go down to Eureka just over the border in the good old US of A, to visit the builders' merchant there again, in order to talk to the kitchen and bathroom man. You will recall that I last tried to visit this place on a Sunday only to find it closed.  Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that the Kitchen man works every day, except Saturdays.

Not to be discouraged, I thought I would make good use of my time by visiting the local shipping agent to arrange to have things delivered there, that I order online from the States. This saves the hugely more expensive cost of shipping things directly to me in Canada and, as it is not much of an inconvenience to nip over the border to collect things, it is well worth the trouble. Imagine my disappointment therefore to discover that I had visited the agent on the one Saturday of the month when the office is not open.

Not to be discouraged, I decided to visit a little, er, shall we say Bistro for a bite to eat, that had been recommended to me by a friend. I had been informed that it was 'the best place in Eureka to get something to eat.  Much better than MacDonalds, A&W, Burger King etc.  The burgers are real and the BLT's to die for'.  Imagine my disappointment therefore to be served up with a tasteless BLT with burnt stringy bacon.

Not to be discouraged I decided that, as it was such a lovely day, I would drive over to see the southern end of Lake Koocanusa and here my luck changed, for a while at least. I drove over to Rexford, about 10 miles to the west of Eureka, a settlement of about 20 wooden buildings including the post office, pub and general store. The rest of the place is a trailer park for about 300 holiday homes, most of them permanently established, well situated and cared for.

On the way to Rexford, I passed this little bridge and couldn't resist taking a photo. For some reason it reminded me of the 'Bridges of Maddison County.' I felt a bit like the character, played by Clint Eastwood, who was a photographer but, I couldn't see any trace of a lonely housewife (Meryl Streep).  Anyway, I was in Lincoln County not Maddison.

Koocanusa Lake (resevoir) is lowered during the winter in readiness for the spring thaw and where I am, at the north end of the lake, it is just the main river channel that has water in it at the moment. Down at Rexford however, there is water, which by the way is already starting to come up.

I spent a few moments beside the lake contemplating the meaning of life when I thought that it was too early to go home and that a nice drive down to the south end of the lake, to see the Libby Dam, was a good idea and from there take a look at the map to decide a suitable route home. Just south of Rexford is the only bridge in the USA that crosses the lake and, so I thought, it presented a good option for the return journey.

I was rather hoping to see some bears and possibly a cougar but, these mountain sheep, quite a rare sight, literally hundreds of deer, a few eagles and a few dozen turkeys were a good bag for the day.

At the dam I got out of the car, stretched my legs and took this photo. Interesting to note the high water marks on the dam wall.

The Dam, from the other side. The Dam is run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. From here I decided to continue on to the town of Libby, about another 17 miles down the trail.

Libby is the 'City of Eagles' and the good burghers of the town are proud to display them ......

..... wherever they can. 

In Libby, I wisely decided to fill up with fuel. I had noticed on my drive down from Eureka (about 50 miles) that there wasn't a single filling station, or for that matter a house, and I met only two cars coming the other way. It was a very pleasant drive but not the sort of road you want to run out of fuel on. I also had a look at the map and decided on a circular route back to Eureka via Yaak, deep in the mountains of Northern Montana, a journey of about 150 miles. This route, I thought, would give me the best chance of seeing a bear or a cougar and it looked remote enough to be a bit of an adventure.

The road up to Yaak from Libby quickly deteriorated in size, quality and condition. After a few miles it reduced to a single lane, hemmed in by deep snow banks on either side. In the 50 miles or so up to Yaak, I met only one car coming the other way, but, fortunately, in a place where one of us could pull over. The local homes and huts also started to deteriorate the further up into the mountains I went and images from the film 'Deliverance' began to cast their shadows over me. A sign warning visitors that this is a "Grizzly Habitat" even gave me hope of seeing a bear. Eventually, the road itself was covered with snow and I began to wonder if I had missed a sign saying the road was closed. After I traversed the pass at the top of the climb the road began to wind its way down to Yaak and slowly it improved.

Now Yaak is rather odd, but I suspect not a particularly unusual community for these remote back-woods parts of the country. I am sure there was some sort of a community here long before the 60's and 70's but, at about that time the hippies and draft dodgers discovered that it was a place where they could escape to. There is a bar and a general store there, but little else other than a number of scattered dwellings hidden away from the road in the woods.

 A yurt dwelling in the woods at Yaak...

.... and a teepee were but two of the odd variety of dwellings that exist up here. Most were rather shabby wooden sheds seemingly put together with very few resources.

Yaak sits on a T junction of the road from the south, that I came in on, and an east-west route (508) that should have provided me with a route back to the bridge over Koocanusa Lake. So I turned east and headed up, deeper into the mountains once again. After a few miles steady climbing, the road narrowed and snow banks once again began to hem the road in. The dwellings ceased and there was a shabby sign at the side of the road on which I could just make out that, the road was not maintained from this point onwards.

Not to be discouraged, I reminded myself that I've been in worse situations than this before and so, confident that my winter survival kit, complete with axe, machette, snow shovel etc, would get me out of most situations, I decided go on. The thought of retracing my steps and taking the long way back was enough to disuade me from turning around and besides, if I was going to see a bear or a cougar this was the best chance I was likely to get. As I continued, the forest on either side became more and more primordial and after a few more miles there was a large snow pile on the road baring the way.

Not to be discouraged, I could see that the road was relatively clear on the other side and so I got the snow shovel out and, with the help of the axe to cut the ice, I cut a path through to the other side of the pile. The jeep had no difficulty in negotiating this and, after about half an hour, I was on my way again. The road continued to climb and the conditions got worse and worse until eventually, in about 18 inches of old snow the wheels began to spin.

Not to be discouraged, and with a steep drop on one side of road, I decided it was time to put the snow chains on. For this I had to back down the road a short distance to a place where the ground was firm enough for me to work with the snow chains. Backing down the slope was interesting enough but, I managed it OK after a couple of pushes forward to straighten up the line. 'Well', I thought, as I lay in the snow wrestling with the snow chains, 'this is the time for a grizzly or a cougar to appear.'

With the snow chains on, I resumed my attempt to get to the top of the pass, which I thought couldn't now be very far away. I managed to get another mile or so up the road before the snow just got too deep and I ground to a wheel spinning, ignominious defeat. At about the same time it also decided to snow.

Not to be discouraged, I thought - 'hey, that was fun, it's about 6 o'clock in the evening so lets go back to the pub in Yaak, have something to eat and find out what Yaak is all about.' Getting back down the slope produced more adrenaline than going up it but, I managed it eventually, got the chains off and drove all the way back to Yaak where the barmaid, herself an old hippy who had left Chicago over thirty years ago at the tender age of 23 to come to this remote place to live, cooked me a real burger and told me all about Yaak. I eventually got home via the western route at about midnight, having had a thoroughly good day, despite not seeing a bear or a cougar. Now don't you just wish you had been with me?