Road Trip!

A couple of weeks ago Briar, Christy, Lyssa and I went on a road trip to Anchor Point, Alaska. There was a horse we were interested in for Briar. His name was Shorty but that didn't deter us from heading out for a 5 hour (each way!) drive on a beautiful day in October.
Briar is 15 now and has her permit so I let her drive part of the way. We were hauling the stock trailer so she didn't drive in any traffic. As you can see we pretty much had the road to ourselves. Above is Turnagain Pass. By December there will be feet and feet of snow and the parking lots will be full of campers and snowmachines on the weekends.
This is Cook Inlet and the range of mountains you can see through the haze is part of the Pacific Rim Ring of Fire. There are several active volcanoes including Mt. Redoubt that erupted in 09 and Mt. Spurr that erupted in 91 or 92.
The wildlife is amazing. We saw about 50 swans on this trip. Many of them were on Potter's Marsh just south of Anchorage. These are in a pond at the junction of the Seward Highway and the Sterling Highway. We have so few major roads in Alaska that they all have names.

Here we are almost back to Anchorage. Briar snapped this picture as we were zooming along so it's kinda blurry and really doesn't do justice to the beautiful sunset.

And this is Shorty. We hauled him back to Wasilla for a week trial period but he really did live up to his name. Briar is about 5'7" so she really needs a taller horse. Shorty was a good horse but just not a fit for Briar.

There's another horse we looked at though. That story will follow soon!

For Funder

This is the container that we used for Briar's cow, Alice. I have 9 more just like this one and one that I have already modified for the rams.

My plan to to put two cans together with the open ends facing with an alley between them. Then we'll roof that alley way so I can put their feeders under cover. The fiberglass sides will be cut out (leaving the aluminum supports) and the sheep will be able to use the cans as three sided sheds.

The weather in October has been beautiful except for one weekend of 100 mph straight line winds that had many people without power for up to 2 days. We have a generator, wood stove, gas lanterns and a gas cook stove as well as several stock tanks full of water so the power being out didn't affect us. The sky in these pictures is what we have had for the past week. However, the downside is that the high temperatures are in the low 40s and it's been below freezing every night. Termination dust is slowing marching down the mountains and we will have snow on the ground in less than a month.

Where has the time gone?

We are frantically getting ready for winter. There is so much to be done in a short time. First all the landscaping jobs we have been contracted for must be finished. Then the equipment can come home and begin working on getting the snow plowing stuff ready.

My sweety's plow truck has been stored all summer behind 8 cargo containers from Alaska Airlines. They were not air worthy so the containers were going to be crushed. They will make perfect sheep houses so I drug 11 of them home. To get his plow truck out from behind them we have to clean up where the chickens were and build a gravel platform for the feed shed to be moved so we can clean that area and move 2 containers to make a shelter for Briar's cow Alice. The 2 sheep pens need to be cleaned and platforms made for 4 containers to be moved for sheep shelters. The other 2 containers will be spotted in the yard as storage for my big Ferris mowers. All that work to get his plow truck out and ready for winter work.

The winter horse pen will be built as soon as the ground freezes. Then the horses will come to the upper lot for the winter. I must say that I really enjoy having the horses 27 feet from my front door. It makes feeding at 40 below much easier.

"They" say there are three seasons in Alaska: winter, getting ready for winter, and road construction.

Lots more going on. More posts to come with pictures!