March 12 2012

    Holy smoke its been a couple a weeks since I've posted anything. People are going to think my power has gone off again. Nothing in particular has come to mind to write about, but I'm starting to feel sorry for those poor souls that check in every day to see if I have. I still check the stats every day and find a certain fascination with the whole tracking feature, and I will edit in here later that the first reader of this particular post will be located in Alexandria, Egypt.
 Theres been visitors from 25 countries. I can look into how they reached the site, often from something like google pictures, or key word search. For instance like the fella over in Slovenia that typed in "peltonova turbino", and came up with an image of my pelton wheel. Or the person in Serbia searching saw-mills on his computer, and came up with the story on the shop. I could tell when my buddy Lorne was down in Mexico and checking the site. I can see pretty quick if there has been a mention of the site someplace, often  getting a spike in visits from a cabin or hot spring forum, but mention of Hotspring Lodge comes up in the strangest places out there. I had a visit from a Royal Canadian Mounted Police IP address in Ottawa. Their route to the site was a google picture of one that I had used in my story of the early roadhouse down at the hot spring, I assume some guy on his coffee break googled gold-rush.
The particular image was of some roadhouse artifacts, including a rusted out old rifle and old square nails.
Some visitors stick around for a bit and browse, sometimes downloading a picture or two. Other visits last only seconds, people having a quick look before better judgement takes over.
I'm always surprised at the amount of visits from Russia, for eg. in the past while there had been 1975 visits from Canada, 366 from the States, and 304 in Russia. The States has only taken over the number two position recently after a lot of visits after a mention on a popular cabin forum.
Don't see many comments from readers, maybe its too difficult to log in to comment. I understand my 'blog' may be a little confusing to someone who just logs on cold turkey and starts reading from the top down. Someone did comment recently that instead of a blog it reads like a book, only backwards! 

In the olden days I remember sitting out here writing stories for a planned book with my Brother word processor to pass the time, mostly to do with my then recent adventures and misadventures in the wilds of Central America. I'd print  copies out for friends and relatives, sometimes 20 pages filled on both sides stapled together then stuffed into an envelope and mailed on the next trip to town.
A month or so later I might get a card back saying, "Good one", or "Send the next installment!", or, "You ever heard of spellcheck?"
Nowadays, with my dish, the entire globe is out there with a single poke at the orange 'publish' button.

  Occasionally my publish button may go silent for a stretch, where I am either gone blank, or occupied with other adventures, like housework and things, or catering to my infrequent demanding guests. I had to do some monkey wrenching on my vehicles in the last few weeks too. The roads out here are not really bad. But they are not really good either, and they do take a toll on the vehicles that live out here. I've often been asked over the years, "..whats the best kind of vehicle to use out in this country?.."
I always answer, "Someone else's!".
My little pickup needed some ball-joint work, which was a new experience for me, and back a month or so ago I was coming down the lake road in my van and encountered some loose rock on the road that had come down the bank. That's nothing too unusual but it was a little tight alongside the lake to go around so I decided to straddle one, something I seldom ever do. My van sits lower than any vehicle I've had out here and I had a new washing machine in the back and I'm sure it was sitting lower than usual and I could tell by the sound it hit something other than steel under there. It was that dull thud of a cast aluminium oil pan. I managed to get home before all the oil drained out. Not too big a thing to repair, but in the process noted coolant in the engine oil so apart it came for new top end gaskets, being quite a bit of work.
I can do the mechanical work alright, but I hate having to.

 I finally moved the repaired bear out of the shop. Its taking me awhile to get used to him standing there, and gives me the odd start when I walk by. I have spilled several coffees here on my way out to the shop at night.

 Late February the snow melted off and the sun came out and it was quite nice.

Sitting on the deck eating pistachios kind of afternoon.

This is just down river from lot 1747, the area on the river you see on this side is the hot spring campsite.

Then it snowed.

Then it got nice again.

 No one around at the hot spring campsite.

Then what do you know, it snowed again.

The cycle repeated, and it melted off for a week then snowed again today.

Spring is still a week off so I guess I can't crab too much. I'd have to consult my journals, but I don't recall  snow this late in March. As a rule I'm usually burning dead grass on the field about this time of year.