Chief's almost ready to give to his owners

February 18, 2019 - Monday evening

9 degrees/clear/calm winds

Pentoga Road

I sure had a lot of fun making Chief out of a scrap piece of pine. There's still some touch up to do and a liberal application of poly to spray over the entire head, but the hard work is done. 

The REAL Chief will be coming to stay with us for a few days next week while our friends and Chief's owners, Tom and Melinda, fly to sunny Mexico for a bit of R&R. 

With the temperature hovering around zero, I walked to Pentoga Village first thing this morning. After taking a month's hiatus from hiking, it felt good to strap on the boots and get the blood flowing again. The three miles flew by.

The rest of the morning was spent in the shop piecing Chief together. There's a backboard smaller than the actual head onto which the pieces are glued one at a time. There are plenty of mistakes in my first attempt at constructing a dog, but as I said previously, it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to doing many more.

We wanted to get our tax paperwork delivered to the preparers, so Sargie and I drove to Iron Mountain early this afternoon. Sargie was the official photographer.

Ever feel as though you are being followed?

The day was picture perfect and we took our time driving on back roads.

Ice shacks on a local lake

We ran several errands while in town and laughed when we found a cart rack almost buried in snow at the local Walmart.

We also stopped at the local hardware store that sells John Deere tractors so that I could drool for a while. I told Sargie that if we could come up with $30,000 cash, I could buy my tractor and we could purchase a side by side UTV! 

We both laughed and drove on.

Once home, Sargie headed inside to do some house work while I began removing snow from the front porch roof. The entire surface was covered, plus there was a large drift at one end. To make matters worse, a heavy layer of ice lay under it all.

I moved from the porch to the roof of the storage unit attached to the back of the barn. A huge drift stretched across the entire roof and snow was waist deep in some places.

The shadows were growing long by the time the roof was bare. 



Tired, I paused long enough to enjoy the view. 

When the shed was built several years ago, I was asked why the bracing was included on the inside. As Mississippi Brother Garry told me at the time, they make a good head thumper.

They also ensure that the roof can withstand a goodly amount of snow without caving in.

I took a celebratory ride around Jambo's field on the Tundra, but not before getting too close to the large gulley and getting stuck... really stuck.

It took a while to tramp the waist deep snow down far enough to free the snowmobile. With the machine back on top of the snow rather than under it, I sat on the seat and enjoyed the view. 

Sargie's opens the Vision Center Tuesday morning. I'm reentering the workforce for one day and will fill in for one of the English teachers at Florence High School.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Since neither of us had $30,000 handy Monday afternoon, I left my tractor and our side-by-side UTV at the dealer.