Well that wrapped up nicely; busy weekend to kick off hunting season! The Outback was jammed full as we figured it would be; yahoos running all over the place on their machines. I won’t miss that.
Saturday morning chores: Patmores came down after breakfast with the log splitter and made us respectable again. Took the four of us about an hour and a half to split the two loads of wood we picked up last weekend. So the one pile is two deep; now we have to do two or three more loads to replenish the other pile and we will be back to normal again.
We headed up to Bruno Bay with Patmores, and Mike & Miranda and kids. Myla rode with me again and fell asleep both ways. Nice day, sunshine but a little cold when it went behind the clouds. Had a little picnic out there then headed back. Dropped off the family, and Richard, Sven and myself headed back out. Scouted around the gravel pit via the Junction. We were trying to find a way out to the highway from there, but no go. Ended up hitting a real soft spot late in the day, and none of us felt like winching our way out until dark so we turned around and headed back home for supper.
Miranda’s folks brought their trailer up and camping in with them at C-Loop (Ralph & Eileen)
So we went down for a drink after dinner and campfire chat; really nice people. They, like us, downgraded from a big RV to a tent and are now in a small trailer. Nice to see other people switch things up too!
Sunday was again pretty good weather, looked a little chilly in the morning but it cleared up.
Got the news early on that my work trip to the trade show in Charleston SC was cancelled; Hurricane Dorian bearing down and I wasn’t sorry at all to stay out of its path.
So we went back out the gravel pit with Richard & Patricia to clear trail out to the highway.
Sven packed up all the guns and hunting gear (this being Sept 1st, first day of hunting season) buuuuttttttt…. He forgot the chainsaw. Hard to clear trail without it. Thankfully Richard remembered his, but it wasn’t entirely full of gas and he didn’t bring any extra. We cleared the trail anyway, with some very judicious choices of what was chainsaw-worthy, and what would get cut with the little handsaws. They must have engineered that quite well, because they did indeed make it all the way to the highway and the chainsaw ran out of gas right there. Great job!
So we booked down the highway for a couple of kilometers, and went back in on what I call Wash Machine Road. (someone had dumped a washing machine at the trail head, so good enough name) This is the trail that Sven and I hiked last year in November; not much sign of game. That trail was pretty clear; and thankfully we didn’t need the chainsaw to get through.
We had trail lunch, just hot dogs and snacks. Then we shot off the Fox double barrel 20-gauge that Dad gifted us, wow that thing is just so fun! We introduced Richard to the joy of shooting up big coffee cans and making them bounce down the range.
He introduced Sven to the joyful kick of a 12 gauge pistol grip shotgun; it apparently is NOT as easy as Arnie makes it look in the movies. (I passed on that particular activity)
Did not see any wildlife in the bush other than ourselves, but we had fun anyway. And now we have another trail cleared that we can hunt in November. It feels really good to be getting familiar with the area.
Pretty heavy rain Sunday night; we sat up at Patmore’s camp and shouted at each other around the campfire. Rain coming down on a 24 x 30 tarp is LOUD.
Monday dawned blustery and cold. Winter was definitely in the air. Some people pulling out for the season; all to the good. We will soon have the place to ourselves and hope the wildlife will come back.
Too bad Richard and Patricia are missing the next several weekends. They are helping Mike move and won’t be able to come back until the last weekend of September. At least they have a few more days; Richard booked off the week from work so they will stay up there until Wednesday. Hope he gets to hunt some, but if not, we will save them some chickens when we are out there again looking for moose.
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