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The first part of our grand plan is over. We found out that we can easily live in the trailer for six summer months. We had a great year. I worked too much but it’s mostly done and I only have a few chores to do next year.

Part of our plan was to arrange transport to Comox where we were flying out from. Nobody would want to pick us up at 3 am so we decided to drive to the airport the day before departure and rent a car. It almost worked out that easy.

We got to the airport and checked in with National car rental. As we walked to the car for an inspection I gave Rosalie instructions where to meet me. I checked the car out and waited for her.

After a few minutes I checked around but couldn’t see her anywhere. I waited about ten minutes and called her. She informed me that she was following me about 5 km away. (???) The interesting thing was that she had no idea of the make or colour of our rental. Now you know why I want to keep her on a leash.

I told her to wait where she was and went to find her. Fortunately she was on the road to Costco where we needed to go next. We had a giggle at the side of the road and carried on with the plan. She will follow anybody so I have to keep an eye on her.

On the way home I was feeling a little nauseous but thought it was because I hadn’t eaten much that morning. As the day progressed I started to feel a lot worse. By the evening I was in bad shape and our trip looked to be in jeopardy. I took a bunch of antacids and that helped a bit, but it wasn’t until I took a couple of gravol that things started to improve a bit more.

I had a lot to do to finish closing up the trailer for the season so I had to be okay. I got through it and drove us to the airport next morning. We checked in and went to security where we found out that I had printed Rosalie’s boarding pass but not mine. I had to go back to the check-in line which was twice as long by now to get a pass. Back to security where the line was now three times longer.

We got to Calgary okay but I had no appetite so had to force myself to eat a banana. I was still taking the gravol.

On the flight to PV I started to feel a bit better and decided to try to eat something. I had a sandwich and with that, the problem mostly seemed to go away. After we checked in, we went out for a bite to eat and I felt a lot better. We still don’t know what caused it. The guy across from us at the park had a touch of stomach flu the week before so I can only think it was that. We did get the flu shot 10 days ago.

There seems be a shift in the universe. We left Nanaimo in beautiful sunshine but when we got to PV it was raining. That’s a bit barse akwards if you ask me. But it is nice and warm here and Rosalie says “it’s a polite rain.”

Anyway we are sitting in the hotel room with glass of cheap wine each and happy to be back in our second home.

Our old chiminea that I built a couple of years ago has given us great service. On cool mornings I would get up and light it and we would enjoy our morning tea in comfort. The only problem we had with it was that we had to cut the firewood in half because of the diameter of the tank.

I vowed to built a better one from a 30 lb tank laying on its side. So we went to our local refurbishing propane tank guys and I saw a 50 lb tank and fell in love. It was perfect, this would make an awesome fireplace. The problem was that they refurbish this particular size of tank and had no used ones. I could buy a new one for $78 but I’m way too cheap to do that. I pleaded with the guy and asked him to turn his back so I could steal one, but he wouldn’t budge.

I was thinking of all ways I could get a 50 lb tank. I even looked it up on Kijiji but only came away disappointed.

As I often do, I put it out to the universe and waited to see what would turn up. One morning we went into the ‘big city’ of Bowser for some groceries. As we were leaving I remembered that the local gas station served propane and just might have a used tank.

We pulled in and spoke to a young guy serving there. He took us to the back of the lot and low and behold we saw a veritable field of used propane tanks. They didn’t have a 50 lb but he showed me a very nice 40 lb tank that I was sure I could work with.

He had to clear it with his boss and after the usual warnings that I could blow myself up, (as if!) he gave me the tank for my favourite price of Free.

I’m very cautious around used propane tanks as even the smallest amount of gas can be dangerous. The first thing I needed to do was remove the valve so I could fill the tank with water to force out all the old propane.

Well, I hammered and smashed that darn valve but it wouldn’t budge. Plan two: open the valve to release any left over gas; turn the tank upside down to let any more gas escape. Then, very carefully drill two half-inch holes in the top, then fill the tank with water.

In the meantime there was a smell of propane in the air with our neighbor Bruce running around trying to find out where the leak was coming from. He had just got a new tank and thought it was leaking. I explained that it was only me making that smell (well not actually me) and he went home happy.

My next challenge was to cut a door in the tank. The neighbours must love me because I used a cut-off disc on my hand-held grinder so it was some noisy.  What the hell, I have rights too. Besides, I’m sure they have fun referring to me as that mad English bastard doing something stupid again.

I had a bit more grinding to do but had to put it off  because of the extreme fire hazard condition. The grinder kicks up a lot of sparks.

Well, the door’s cut out so we will have to see how it goes from here.

Our bigger and better gazebo arrived and we went to pick it up.

We were in the old beater truck as the package we were collecting weighed 550 lbs. As we got into Nanaimo we stopped at a light and I noticed wisps of smoke coming from the left front wheel well. Great, that’s all we needed.

We got to Lowes, dropped off the old gazebo and waited for the fork lift to load the new one. All the time I was worrying about how we were going to get home with a busted truck.

They eventually brought out the package and we tried to load it onto the truck. There were three of us pushing with Rosalie supervising. The darn thing got stuck and wouldn’t slide off the forks. But then somehow the lid of the box popped open and low and behold, inside were six smaller packages. Now it was easy.

We still had to get home though. The problem we had was that the brake was dragging intermittently. I found that if I hammered the brake pedal with my foot it would free it up for a while. It worked and we got home just fine with no more smoke. Another job for another day.

That afternoon, I opened all the boxes and checked the contents to make sure all the parts were there. This took about two hours. Holy smoke, there were a lot of parts. I couldn’t start without Peter who was coming the next day. I had to have him to supervise, lose bits and generally get in the way. I jest! I couldn’t have done it without him. Thanks again Peter.

So, the construction begins. The instruction said that it would take six to eight people two and a half hours to erect. Peter and I reckoned we could halve that time. We had started at about 10:30 that morning and at four o’clock I called it a day with about an hour’s work left which I finished up the following morning.

We would have completed it a lot sooner but neighbours kept dropping by. Some out of curiosity and one to offer a second ladder which we found very handy.  I didn’t mind the interruptions as one brough me a bottle of wine for helping him find a TV antenna.

While Peter and I were working Rosalie had gone to the monthly campground meeting. She returned with the news that they had been discussing gazebos in the park. I don’t know what it was about but it was up now and no way was it coming down anytime soon.

We love it, it’s comfortable and way back in the trees where the air is coolest. If it gets too cool we can close the walls and light the new chiminea. Which is another story for another day.

At home we take showers for granted. In the bush it’s somewhat more complicated.

So how do you take a shower in the bush where you either freeze or get eaten by bugs? Well, we had a plan. First, Vic set up a sheet of hardboard for privacy. Then we threw a 5 gallon water tank on the fire to heat up. At the end of the day we poured water into a shower bag and hung it above our makeshift bathroom. Easy peasy!

My shower went like this; strip, get as wet as possible drowning as many mozzies as possible, soap up, rinse really quickly, dry off really fast, grab a can of Raid and spray myself all over all the time shouting “stay away from that! Dont you dare” then quickly dress and spray myself again. Then stand Really still and wait for the itching to start.

Later Vic said he lit a couple of mosquito coils and had no problems. Now, why wasn’t I that smart?

Dean had another plan. He had a small water on demand system and he and Gordie decided to use that. They tried to shelter behind Dean’s truck to get out of the wind. I happened to arrive to the camp as these two were running around in their undies freezing cold and trying to get a shower. Of course I gave them a hard time about it and Vic and I needled them for days after.

We had been in the bush for four days and hadn’t seem a living sole but ourselves. That evening, Gordie went to do his business in the bush and as he was pulling up his pants he heard toot, toot as a pickup went by. It was a couple of First Nation folks returning home from the big city. What timing, I loved it.

That evening we were visited by another miner who happened to be a geoligist. He gave us lots of usefull advise as to where to look for gold.

The following evening our geologist friend showed up again and shortly after was joined by another couple of guys whom I think we’re father and son. The older of the two was 83 years old and had mined in the Yukon before setting up a business selling mining equipment. He was an interesting guy. He said that he had taught the main guy from the show “Yukon Gold” how to mine. He also showed us some photos of 1 lb gold nuggets, probably worth about $20,000 each.

Another problem we had was getting up for a pee in the night. It was bloody cold out there so eventually we set up a communal pee bucket which we took turns emptying , and life was a bit better.

I was dreading taking another shower.

More pictures.

Well, we weren’t really prospecting. We knew the gold was there, we just had to hunt it down.

There are a few videos in this post and parental guidance is recomended. We were a bunch of guys in the bush, so the language got a little rough.

Most of the transportation to the claim was by quad and a side-by-side quad as it was about 1.5 km from our campsite. It was still really cold that morning but I had wrapped myself in five layers of clothes so I stayed fairly warm.

Before we started, Vic and I rigged up a tarp around the old outside biffy for some privacy. This was of course where you are most vulnerable to the mosquitoes so a few records for doing your business were broken.

Dean had brought down most of the equipment the day before, so all we had to do was hook up the water pumps and start digging.  We seemed to get into a rhythm quite naturaly: Gordie and Lyndon did most of the digging; Dean hauled the dirt to the conveyer; I shoveled it into the hopper and Vic worked the stick. The stick was important as you can see in the video. The dirt was wet so we had to break it up with a stick to keep production going. I would relieve Vic once in a while but didn’t quite have his technique. I think it’s all in the wrist. At the end of the day we had processed eight loads of dirt. Not bad for our first day.

The tailing pond, where the dirt was washed into was a playground for Dean’s dog Bailey. She was just like a little kid. Once she was out of the water she would stand shivering just waiting for a chance to jump back in.

I had started a fire as soon as we got to the claim. This job remained mine as I like to set light to things. (Evil chuckle). Vic had managed to drive the truck in (a video of him driving it out) so we had all our food available. At noon I threw a pack of smokies on the grill and we had a nice lunch.

We worked through the afternoon and quit about 3 pm. Time to head back to camp open a beer and eat some of the great food the ladies had made for us. Then sat around the fire drinking and telling lies.

We were in a pretty desolate area. They had just logged all the pine beetle damaged wood and it was way too early for the bush to grow back.

Before we turned in we lit a stove in the trailer for an hour, so at least we went to bed warm. I wasn’t quite as cold that night so things were improving.