Moose on the lake

Woke up the morning to a moose having a drink and a bath in the lake outside my cabin. I tried to get some good pics of it but every time i'd get set up for a shot it'd walk behind a tree. I did get one decent pic and shot a little video, unfortunately it was already on the other side of the lake so the quality is not so good. I also put it to some music but you can still hear the gray jays, a common bird in the area and i think you can hear one of Dougs roosters about a mile away. I've seen this moose before on the lake i'll try to get some better footage of it. This moose is tiny compared to the one Sammie faced off with on the river. Wow, the smoke from fires near by is so bad i can't see the hill on the other side of the river from Dougs place!! So i've got a pic of the moose and the view from Dougs place about 3pm Alaska time, may 31st. You can barely make out the lake where my cabin is at.

Having a day off

Have a quick video today. We're having a strong start to summer up here. Mid 80's during the afternoon and lots of sun. I've seen several moose now and in the video i make a reference to one Sammie ran after. That guy was probably 1500 pounds!! Sammie and i are lucky he didn't have any interest in us. I'm having a lot of fun working and working, haha. Enjoying a little down time today, no big jobs on the agenda. Only down side to the start of the summer this year is fires have taken off really bad all over the state. It is very arid here in the interior and we haven't had much rain this spring. A lot of fires have been started by lightening strikes including one only several miles from our cabins. We may be getting the lightening but mother nature is forgetting about the rain to go with it. For a couple days we had fire crews flying helicopters and planes dumping water and fire retardant on the fire over the hill from us. The helicopter would hover over the Chatanika river, fill a water bucket then fly over my cabin up the hill and dump it on the fire. Noisy couple of days but looks like they put it out. Other than that it's going great out here in the bush, haven't been to town in almost a month and don't miss it.

Update on my electrical system

After working with and sorting out a couple good batteries from Doug i decided it was time to get my little power system more organized. I thought it would be a good idea to keep everything but an outlet outside. My solution was to build a small shed right outside my front door and hard wire in a standard outlet inside the cabin. In the photos i show the start of the electrical system with a small car battery mounted in a box with the inverter attached and the solar panel on a short cord so i could move it around fairly easy. Then i moved on to attaching the solar panel to my camera tripod, with only a few modifications. After that i started a structure that i could build on everyday, a couple pics of that. Then a little siding scribed to the logs of the cabin covering the frame wrapped with pieces of a tarp. And finally the almost finished product, just need a couple hinges and a handle. I also would like to include a pick of the tools i use for every project at my cabin. I feel spoiled when i go up to Dougs cabin and get to use any and every power tool imaginable. And to get a into a little more detail about what i can do with my power system. Right now i just use the power to keep my laptop computer charged, charge my i-pod, charge AA batteries and run my external hard drive for my computer. The plan down the road is to pick up a couple new deep cycle batteries to have a better base to work with and then maybe pick up a small LCD TV (19inch) that only takes about 30 to 50 watts of power. As long as i get a full day of sun the panel i have now keeps up a good charge, i can't wait to see what a couple new batteries can do. The batteries i'm using now are over 5 years old so they are at the end of their lifespan.

Ahh, a hot shower!!

As the title suggests today's installment includes a look at a water heating system that also harnesses the power of the sun. In the greenhouse when i had installed the plastic i made it so that it would be easy to remove so we could install some black water hose to heat water. That was one of the latest projects i worked on. Drilling out and installing a semi-ridged black water hose. In the spring/summer season Dougs cabin is supplied with water from a spring and reservoir about 1000ft. uphill from the cabin. That means there is plenty of water pressure here at the cabin for any running water needs. Sprinklers, sink in the cabin, hoses in the yard and a solar water heater. The pics show the holes drilled for the water line, the line installed and the plastic wall re-installed. If i hadn't mentioned before the plastic installed on the outside and inside of the greenhouse is very spendy stuff. Meant not to deteriorate from UV rays from the sun. But it also lets about 90% of the UV through, a lot more that a standard window of a house. With all that energy being transmitted through the plastic on a party cloudy day we can heat water almost to hot to touch by hand. The system i custom made only holds about 2.1 gallons but if your quick in the shower it's just enough.

Now i'm wired for power!!

Doug has supplied with me all the parts to run and maintain a 12 to 120volt power system. He has all kinds of spare parts and components just laying around not being used so we put together a system for my little cabin. The only thing that we were missing was a solar panel and Doug picked one up for me the last time he was in town. In the video i have today it shows a very basic setup but i am going to haul a bunch more supplies and batteries down to the cabin and construct a better system for it all. This is just one of the things going on right now. Yesterday Doug and i floated the 4 wheeler back across the river because the other one is still waiting for some parts and we had lots of supplies to haul up from the river. He had me on the raft polling the ATV across the river while he pulled on the raft with a rope and waded across the river! Wow, tough guy! That water is about 40 degrees and he was up to his waist in water with just shorts on! Everyday brings a crazy new adventure, never know what's going to happen next. A few nights ago i had a red fox come down the hill towards my cabin and had to scare him off so the geese wouldn't get disturbed. Back to the solar power, the picture i'll include today is the back of the panel and shows the specs of the panel. Not a ton of power but should be able to maintain good voltage if i let the batteries charge all day while i'm working. I'll show you the system when i get it all hooked in a more permanent fashion.

Off the power grid

Here is a little video of how Doug maintains a power system at his cabin. It shows the solar panels and how they track the sun then on the generator house or bomb shelter however you look at it. In the generator house you will see a bank of 16 deep cycle marine batteries that get charged by the sun and/or one of the 4 generators he has. He currently has a 3000 watt power inverter to convert the 12 to 13.5 volts from the batteries into 120 volt power for all the appliances. That inverter isn't quite powerful enough to power some larger power tools so one of the generators still gets used pretty often. And in the winter months he may run one of the generators up to 10 hours a day to maintain power in the cabin when the sun is to low in the sky. The generator house took Doug years to construct as you will see in the video he built it with 18 inch thick walls to keep out the 50 below chill in the winter. One of the projects we will work on this summer is installing a wind turbine on the roof of his cabin to supplement the solar/generator power. There usually isn't much wind here but on the rare days when the wind does pick up it will be a great addition.

The Dogs

Had a little extra time today so i thought i've give a shout out for my dogs, haha! A little video to introduce you to some of the animals i hang out with. Sammie, who might end up being mine in the long run. She was originally Ralfs dog but when he left the bush he didn't want a dog anymore so Doug took her. Buster, a husky and Dougs big buddy and goes with him when he's away from his cabin for the day but not into town. Doug will let Buster loose at night when the dogs start barking to chase off whatever is lurking about. And last but not least is Aggie. She is Busters daughter and kinda a runt. Good a detecting an intruder though. If it doesn't translate in the video Buster is a big dog and must weigh between 75 and 100lbs! All of the dogs are very friendly and have lots of love to give. I feel very fortunate to be able to spend time with them.

The river crossing

I shot some video a couple weeks ago of the river at the point that we cross and head up to Murphy Dome. And going for a ride on the 4 wheeler from the river crossing. Wanted to also let you know that i've been working a lot for Doug usually something different everyday. Some of the jobs include Logging, digging, carpentry and some wiring. We moved the battery bank to the generator house today, where it belongs and rewired it to the cabin. Right now i think i have the best job in the world! My commute to world is nothing short of breathless, wink wink. And the views i'm treated to everyday are some of the most beautiful in the world, i think. Up next after the river crossing i'll start to show you some of the jobs i've been working on up at Dougs. And i'll also show you some updated pics of the valley. Everything is changing now and it's getting more beautiful everyday. I also wanted to mention since the video of the river crossing, for those following know, we've been to town. But getting that 4 wheeler across the river was some of the hardest work i've ever done. Dragging that raft into the river and the having to pull it upstream, against the current, to load the wheeler on. The float across went without a problem but man it was tough! Now that we have the 4 Wheeler on the other side of the river going to town isn't as difficult but the trail is still a rough ride.

Walking around the property

I heard some of you were have trouble leaving comments, i have changed a setting so that shouldn't be a problem anymore. Today have another video and pictures of the area surrounding Dougs properties. He owns 3 separate 5 acre properties, all connected to each other and the rest of the area is state land, so you can pretty much do what ever you'd like to on it. In the video i take a walk from my cabin, to feed the geese, down to the river crossing and back to the cabin on a different trail. If i haven't mentioned it before, Dougs has lots of animals and one of them is geese. He brought 9 of them down to the slough when i started staying at the cabin on the lake and now i feed them everyday. In the pics today i have a look at pair of Trumpeter Swans, that nest on the lake i'm on and are rare for this area. A look up river on the trail to the river crossing, then from that same spot looking behind up at the hill side that Dougs cabin is on. Then another view of some of the trail while heading out to the river crossing. Note the sticks layed on the trail, lots of the trail is made like this and some is made with large sticks or boards layed in the tire ruts to keep from sinking to far into tundra or swamp. And finally a picture of the window on my cabin. Apparently i had a little visitor while i was in town. Most likely a small, maybe 2 year old bear cub looking for hand outs. It didn't do anything to the cabin but some things were strewn about in the yard. So far i haven't seen a bear but Sammie has let me know a couple times something is coming down the hill behind the cabin and i just yelled something in the general direction and nothing ever appears, yet.. I have seen a moose on the trail along the slough at a distance of only about 50 ft! Yep, they're huge! Didn't stay long enough for me to snap a pic though. In the next post i'll show you the river crossing and take a ride on an ATV from the river crossing.

My cabin

Moving on to my cabin. Next i'd like to show you a video of the cabin i'm in and some photos the area around the cabin. In the video i show what the inside of my cabin looks like and i take a walk around the perimeter of the cabin. I shot the video before i made a few upgrades to the cabin and before i got it all cleaned up from all the bear carnage from trash left outside the cabin. The photos include the screen door i made, a pic after a little overnight snow on may 5th, my shower facilities, posing with the Honda ATV and what it takes to get water. I do get a lot of my water from the slough and the lake but if i want cleaner water i have to either hike to the river, about a mile or go up the hill to a reservoir fed by a spring from the hill. But the reservoir isn't completed quite yet, still working on that. I was able to use one of the 4 wheelers to go back and forth to Dougs cabin for a couple weeks but after we crossed the river we floated one of the machines across the river and left it there to go up the hill to Murphy Dome. And currently the other 4 wheeler is out of commission. It blew the bearings out of one of the front wheels and we're waiting for some parts on order in town. So for the time being i am hiking to and from Dougs and when it's 40 degrees outside and i hike up to Dougs, about a 15 min. hike, i'm sweating profusely. That should give you idea of the slope i climb almost everyday. In the next post i'll take you on a walk on the trails around the area. And by the way i have lots pics and info and i can't show and tell it all so if you have questions or have something you'd like to see, leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

More of Dougs cabin

Made it back out to Dougs a couple days ago and have established a connection to the internet up at Dougs cabin with my computer. This means i'll be able to bring up to date on what has been going on fairly quickly. Today i have more pictures and video of Dougs cabin and surrounding area. In the video i take a walk around inside Dougs cabin and greenhouse. And the photos are of the inside the generator house, a look at the side of the cabin, a look up a the garden and the geese that i now take care of down at the cabin i'm in. Also a look at the chickens and their winter coop under the cabin and a view down the hill above the garden. You might see a cable strung across the picture. I was in the middle of wiring up a tree to be cut down and i took some video that i'll show you soon.

3 weeks in the bush, so far.

Sorry it took me so long to get an update up but i left my computer in town when i headed out to the bush an this was the soonest i could get back out. Well it was a lot of work to get out to Dougs cabin with out a 4 wheeler or snow machine. Even with one of those machines i'm not sure i would have made it. But, long story short i made it to Dougs cabin in the Chatanika river valley and he let me in, made me a huge breakfast and coffee. For the the first few days out there i stayed at Dougs and walked down the hill to the cabin by the lake that would be my place to stay for the summer and got it ready to go. I had to build a bed frame, a screen door, a screen for the window, some shelves in the cabin and get it stocked up with gear and supplies. I have also been spending a lot of time with one of Dougs dogs Sammie. She goes with me everywhere and now stays at the cabin on the lake with me and lets me know when something comes creeping around. After i got the cabin ready i had a lot of work to do around around the property. All around the cabin are trees that were cut down 12 years ago and needed to be cut up and burned, wood for the wood stove in the cabin. After i had the lake property cleaned up the conditions were getting a little better so i could get started working for Doug, keeping track of my hours and making some $. Today i'll show you some pics of Dougs property. I should be able to start getting updates out at least every couple days now. I have tons of pics and video to show you so please bear with me. The pics are of a view of the river valley from Dougs yard, looking down the trail from the yard at the chicken coop, the solar panels, geese and garden. Also looking up the trail at the cabin and the array of satellites on the roof, a view of the lake property where my cabin is at, about a mile away and Sammie chained up at Dougs. Check back every couple days from now on, lots and lots to come.