Busy day today. Day number… what is it? Five? Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Yep, five. So today I went over to what I’m calling the mainland from the cabin and kind of explored that to see what what the ground looked like over there. Whether it would support a road being put in. I also rowed around the cove that we need to cross in order to get to the cabin. It’s interesting there’s lily pads all over the more shallow areas of the lake and you know a normal lily pad leaf looks kind of like a round pie with a slice taken out. It’s got that. the little notch in the leaf.
Some of these lily pads look like footballs. They’re football shaped, which I’ve never seen before, but interesting. Anyway, I rode up and down the coastline there and got out and looked at the ground and it was excellent high ground, still a ton of trees down. They had that windstorm in December of last year, knocked over hundreds of big, big trees. So trees down all across the forest, but nice high ground. Started making my way west and unfortunately came across a valley of wetlands. So that’s going to create a problem in trying to get a road through to there so we’ll see what happens. And then I rowed over to where my truck is and went to the town hall they’re open Wednesdays from 9 to 11 and talked to the ladies there and got a pass to the dump in, Baileyville which is about 20 miles away from here so now I have some place I can take my trash when I have enough of it I needed to get another bolt for the kitchen hand pump and some gas because I used all the gas for the generator and some food so that I have food for for dinners. Dinners have not gourmet. Day I had a can of tuna fish, another night I had bread and peanut butter, and two nights I’ve had chunky soup but I don’t have any way to heat it up so it’s just cold out of the can. Not bad actually. So not been setting any kind of records for fine cuisine this week. So on my way there I hadn’t really had breakfast so on my way there in Princeton I had seen this restaurant, Old School Family restaurant, and it’s in a building, you can’t even tell where the restaurant is. It’s in like a strip building with a couple other businesses there and there’s no sign on the building to show you where the restaurant is. But I went in there and got a great breakfast, three eggs, sausage. It was great breakfast. They were having a dinner special tonight, pork chop dinner with all the fixings and, couple of vegetables and the like and it was I think $9.70. So can’t beat that with a stick. I’ll be back there.
Called the number for the people that put in dirt roads, put in roads to ask them to see if they could come out and take a look and give me a price. And had an interesting discussion with him, although they’re booked up through the end of the year and then some, so he said he wouldn’t even be able to get out to take a look at it until next year. But he said the wetlands are going to be a problem, going to have to get them approved, permitted and that can be difficult to do. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But he said he had to be very careful because there’s somebody on Patton Pond that’s being a pain in his ass and he needs to make sure that he follows the rules. So don’t know who that is. So on the way back from Princeton, I stopped at the Waite General store since they seem to know everything and asked if they might know who the person on Patton Pond is that might be giving the dirt road guy a fit. And they didn’t know, but had a thought on who it might be. And it sounds like he may be the neighbor of my neighbor Joe Williams. So I said it sounds a little, you know, Peyton Place-ish. And he says, oh it’s like Hatfield & McCoy. So everybody up here, all the neighbors are at each other. So that was an interesting development. And then this afternoon I got back because I still have not gotten the tarp on the roof, which was the main purpose of my trip up this week. So I started doing that and realized I was gonna have a lot of problems because it was so heavy. It’s a 30 by 40 foot tarp, really heavy duty. 22 mil thick and heavy as all get out. It took me three days to get the tarp packaged folded tarp up to the cabin from where I got it out of the rowboat. It’s that heavy. So I unfolded it and then tried to pull it up onto the roof and that was not going well at all. So I was not sure I was going to be able to get the tarp up on the roof. The main task I needed to accomplish on this trip was to get the roof covered with the tarp. It was not looking good so I was pretty frustrated. I finally figured I’d attach a few more ropes and pulled it in a few more places and eventually was able to get it up on the roof and it’s mostly secure now. On one side it’s fully secure, on the other side I need to secure it and then the ends I need to… that should be quick to do that. But it was hot here today again. Yesterday it was up like 85 degrees. I don’t know what it was supposed to get to today but it seemed similarly hot. And it was tough because I was on the roof and I needed to be able to bend my legs well because I didn’t want to stumble and fall off the roof. And the nice part about being out here in no man’s land where there’s nobody around, is nobody can see you. So I ended up just taking off my jeans and working in my underwear and my t-shirt and my shoes and socks. And that was much more comfortable and worked out well. I also picked up some ice at the general store because all my drinks are warm up to this point and I had gotten a six pack of Sam Adams Oktoberfest beer and, I already knew this, but it reconfirmed my opinion that warm beer is not good. So I got a block of ice and a bag of ice and found a cooler in the shed and had a couple cold beers tonight. So that was good.
Tomorrow I believe the agenda is to go down to my niece and nephew-in-law’s house, Jen and Austin, and pick up a solar panel that was delivered after I was there, and also get a shower, which I’m looking forward to very much.
