The Drunken Bear

     Steve and I decided to go up to The Drunken Bear at 2:00 p.m.  Friday afternoon, May 4th, to get a few things done before our volunteer work group of friends showed up the following day.  It had been a relatively nice day, but when I got to Steve's the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down.  Steve had a large barbecue/ smoker he wanted to take to the cabin.  By the time we got it loaded into his truck, we were drenched!  The rain continued pounding down most of the drive to Monroe and traffic was already heavy for this time of the afternoon.  This is what is called "white-knuckle" driving.      We stopped at Lowe's in Monroe to get some needed material and then again at the Sultan Bakery for an early dinner.  This is the first time we have stopped at the Bakery for dinner.  We both ordered chicken fettuccine.  For $9.95 you got a plate full of food that neither of us could finis...

     The daunting task of sheetrocking was our next task, and one I was definitely not looking forward to.  Much to my surprise, we had and will have, help dealing with this...and it was all volunteered.  First, Rick and Heidi, Steve's son-in-law and daughter said they would come up and help put the sheetrock up over the weekend.  Steve got in contact with a company in Monroe and arranged to have the sheetrock, the mud, the tape, and the screws, delivered to The Drunken Bear.  We went up on Thursday, the 19th of April and made room in the cabin for the sheetrock.  We had parked the truck across the road so that the truck bringing the sheetrock would have room to maneuver on our property.  We had the cabin all arranged for the sheetrock and were waiting for its arrival when Steve went to get something out of his truck.  And lucky for us, he did.  As he was heading to the truck he looked up the road and saw t...

A friend recently told me I needed to update this blog, so here it is.  Steve and I have been going up to The Drunken Bear on a somewhat regular basis except for the first three weeks of March.  In that time period, Steve went to Hawaii and I wondered across the border to Canada.  Although I love my Canadian friends and Canada itself, I would have loved to have been in Hawaii...just to be away from the miserable weather we had been having.  Thankfully the work we were doing on the cabin had been on the inside and when we had to do some work outside, there were breaks in the weather to do that.  We finished putting in the rigid insulation as described in the last post.  Next came the rolled insulation.  Now you would think that if the requirement for insulation is now R49, there would be an R49 insulation.  Wrong!  First we would cut and hang R30 kraft faced insulation.  Following the R30, we would then add the R19 non-kraft faced insula...

Steve came by and picked me up at 8:00 a.m. and we were on our way to The Drunken Bear for the first time since late last fall.  Steve had gone up a couple of times over the holiday season and did some various things.  I was still working then and trying to get my house decorated for the holidays, so I was not able to join him. It was a cold morning, with frost everywhere.  It was one of those mornings where you look at the houses and the roofs are all the same color...white.  Steve pointed that out as we were approaching Monroe.  It looked like a scene out of the Stepford Wives where nothing could be out of the ordinary.  Thankfully the look was only temporary. There were some major changes on the way to the cabin since the last time I was there.  First, the new exit from Hwy. 522 onto Hwy. 2 at Monroe is now open.  It makes it so much easier and faster to make the transition.  Now you just turn right at the exit from Hwy. 522 and ...

This rusted metal was pulled from the river.  It is most likely a piece of a stove lost when a home went into the river.  We have placed it at the bottom of a large Douglas Fir.  The other plants are a Sword Fern and a couple of wild Huckleberry bushes. Steve brought a Hydrangea plant up and it seems to love the acidic soil...the source of the blue. There are very interesting stumps around the property.  Unfortunately we lost quite a few of them when we had the land cleared to build the cabin, but there are still some around.  The Huckleberry bushes thrive growing out of these stumps.  On the stump in the front, you will notice a notch on the right side of the stump.  That notch allowed a logger to put a board in the notch to stand on and cut the tree at a higher level. The early morning sun filtering through the trees makes for a very peaceful setting. A Douglas Fir seedling makes an interesting shadow. T...

After four inspections, we have finally passed our electrical inspection.  The first inspection uncovered a short list of things we had to change.  One of those things was the grounding rod.  As has been stated before, the cabin is located on river rock and whenever you try to drive anything into the soil, you will most likely hit one of those rocks.  A grounding rod is 8 feet in length, so naturally, we knew we would never be able to sink it the required length.  We had heard about another process that required the driving of two 4 foot rods and connecting them with the wire. Apparently, this procedure is no longer approved.  Luckily there is another process where you can put a plate in the ground and run the cable to it.  Unfortunately, the inspector did not tell us we needed two plates with the wire connecting the two...so inspection number two failed.   It was off to an electrical store to get another plate.  When the...

...for berries!  This might have been a cold summer, but the berry bushes have been covered in fruit.  We have been eating the wild huckleberries for quite some time...using them in pancakes and atop our bagels...as well as just picking them and popping the fruit into our mouths.  The small wild blackberries have also produced quite a crop and are very tasty.  Drop a few in your pancake batter and you have a sumptuous breakfast. A little cream cheese and wild huckleberries Notice the small size of the wild blackberries