It's getting COLD!

The forecast was pretty much right on today. I saw about 10 snow flakes on my way to work this morning and it ended up being cloudy all day. By most, today was probably the mark for their FIRST flakes...but as I mentioned before we had a few drops of snow-ish precipitation. I would venture to guess more than we had today. As we speak...my weather station is reporting 31 degrees. Brrrrr! With nearing 80 percent humidity I would guess there will be frost on the pumpkins tonight. It would be an excellent night to get the wood furnace up and running...but it is still pretty dry out. We either need to fire it up when it is raining or wait until snow. Luckily, it looks as if we may see some snow toward the 6th. I always wanted it to snow on my birthday so I may just get my wish this year.

I do have a gripe with Discovery channel. Les has pretty much disappeared. Why is that? Maybe it is his off season? The only channel I can see Survivorman on now is some science channel that we do not get. How disappointing!

I did mention a shelter we were starting to work on the other day. Here is a picture of the base of it. I think we may change the design at some point. There is no way to create a shelter like this in the fall when the trees are cold and brittle. The shelter will get better. It has to. There will not be any winter survival outings without it unless they are planned well in advance. It is nice to have a shelter to go to so you are not starting from scratch every time you want to go out. That is the hard part during the winter. Especially when you are working most of the time. So I would anticipate a good weekend of building coming up shortly if we are looking to use this spot. Otherwise we may do some winter camping in the woods behind the house. Winter camping is winter camping in my opinion. As long as you do not go running home every time you get cold!

The leaves have been raked and the grass is mowed. I finished the winterizing of the lawn last Sunday. It had been neglected all summer until we moved back to the house in September. We were living in Petoskey for a good portion of last winter and through the summer. We found a better deal renting this house so we took it. I have been trying to clean up some of the messes I left when we first left this house last January. I could argue that it was a mistake leaving in the first place...but it was a very good experience. We bought a LOT of equipment that will come in handy when we move on from here. The other advantage to coming back...is the bulk of last year's fire wood was still here. There was a malfunction in the wood furnace blower last spring which left us one row of wood left. I still cut about three rows worth this fall with my new Poulan Pro 18" 42CC saw. Not a huge saw...but it cuts through the trees very nicely. Combine the new saw with a new attachment for my Dremel to sharpen the chain and I was in pretty good shape!

Typically I would go on for a while yet...but we have a little bit of cleaning up inside the house to do yet. So I will stop while I am ahead. :)

Goodnight from Northern Michigan!

Derek