Insulation

When I found the cabin it wasn't insulated so once we began the restoration process, it included insulating the walls and ceiling. This sounds straight forward, but of course there is a story. Two falls ago I insulated the cabin and put up vapor barrier only to have a bear break through the door that spring and rip all of it down and out of the cabin.

So of course i had to haul in more insulation and start all over. I put in a new, much stronger door also...... After the new roofing was installed we put up new shingle material also and a metal roof is in the future.

Clean up

The next step was to clean up the interior more thoroughly and cut down a few remaining trees that had grown up around the structure. After clearing around the cabin a friend hauled in some new roofing material for me in his larger plane and we put up the new roof.

"New" Cabin progress

I have made some good progress on my cabin across the inlet this spring and summer. This will be the start of a series of posts on the progress from the original discovery of the cabin, to near completion this fall. Hope you enjoy! I first stumbled upon this place 2 years ago and it needed a lot of attention as you will see. We began by removing

the logs from the roof and cleaning out the interior. We also stripped off all the old roofing and let the wood dry out a bit.

A new strip is christened

The story begins a few years ago when mike and I were toodling around over by Mt. Spur.  We were both in the 150's and mike found a marshy spot near the mountain to land.  He set down and mentioned it was a bit wet so I couldn't really muster the nerve to follow him in.  While circling around I found a little rollover nearby that looked nice and dry but the daylight was slipping away and my confidence wasn't really high that late in the day with a cold night ahead if the landing went poorly.  Fast forward to last Monday.  It was a splitter day with a light breeze and full views of all the big mountains.  I had a full day of cabin work planned but when I stopped by mikes cabin it was hard to resist a day of adventure when he proposed it.  After dumping off supplies at my cabin we winged our way north to the same spot as before looking to do some hiking.  Again mike landed in the marsh but found it was about twice as deep as it was last time.  As he struggled to get off the ground again, I went back up to check out my old spot.  The hill looked good and with a nice little headwind I touched down and rolled out to the other side to have a look at the length.  After mike freed his plane from the marsh he came over and joined me and we set off uphill toward Mt. Spur.  We followed drainage's up the slopes jumping ptarmigan and finding petrified wood at almost every step.  If you look above the planes in the picture you will see the right side of one of the knobs looks just like a gorilla face.  Gorilla strip is born.  Just like the Wrangells I can't stop thinking about this place, truly wild country.

Trip to Spurview with Mayme and Simon today.  Great views and the Lupine were popping.  I hadn't seen that before.

Last year my friend Bob began construction on his timber frame house in Seldovia.  The whole process is intriguing and beautifully simple.  The house should be completed this summer for the most part.   I included a few images of Seldovia, such a wonderful town.

Montague Island

Summer is busy as usual and I have obviously been neglecting the blog.  Today I will post some pictures of a spring trip to Montague island.  Montague is east of Soldotna and is known for some pretty rowdy weather.  We had a great spring, so I took advantage of the clear horizons to explore a bit.  I took one trip really early in the spring, and a second trip with Dusty later.  Montague is known for its excellent deer hunting and we saw plenty of them while over there.  Unfortunately much of the refuse lost overboard in the ocean ends up on the islands shoreline.  This trip was littered with sports knick knacks from a container lost off a ship down the coast in Canada.  We also found a bunch of energy drinks unopened, they were tasty after a long walk on the beach.