John's Cabin Crunch: Whew! Long couple of weeks

Where was I? I'll have to shorten the rest of the trip a bit (sorry, lower 48 friends.) I got to Washington with little trouble, even had a very pleasant border guard back into America (rare in my opinion) and made it at last to Vanessa's place. We had a great time hanging out, relaxing, I got to meet her new kitties, Maximus and bijou, very sweet animals, and we went to dinner one night at her Grandparent's place. Being that I'm almost out of grandparents, and Tim's mom is in Alaska right now, so I'll miss her this year, it was very nice to have a dinner with grandma and grandpa. I watched "He was a Quiet Man" with Christian Slater, and "Lions for Lambs" Both were good not great, but both held my interest, which is impressive as 'lions' is almost all dialogue, very little action.

After That I went to Portland to see Cam and Millie and Rob and Ian and Liz and Megan. We did Geocaching, we went to a cool arcade and had a bunch of fun getting pirate wristbands for prizes, I got to try out Bioshock finally (scary and awesome!) Cam and I watched "Demons" an old Dario Argento ummm, classic? and the next night we watched The Terminator, a definite old James Cameron classic.

After a few days in Oregon, it was on to Arnold, California to see my Aunt and Uncle and Cousins. I got to help my cousin Dave lower the entire platform of his work-in-progress treehouse because it was too close to the 17kW power lines for PG&E's liking, so we dropped it 3 feet, a fun proposition while trying to keep it in one piece, but we made it work! So hopefully by now all is well and my second cousins are playing up there. After watching Hillary's concession speech (an excellent speech in my opinion) and a few more wonderful home cooked meals with my family, it was finally time to head to Utah.

I crossed Ebbet's pass, and hit Carson city and I-80 and began my final leg. While I was crossing the Nevada Desert, I saw something re-entering the atmosphere, I noted the time and my location and heading, and left a message for NASA, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

When I finally had Salt Lake City's skyline in my windshield, disaster struck. Here I've driven over 3000 miles to get here, and for the first time there's police lights in my rear window. I look at my speedometer and GPS, and I'm 2 mph BELOW the speed limit, so I'm pretty miffed by the time the cop reaches my passenger window.
(I roll the window down)
(the Officer walks up) "Sorry, I'm looking for another 4-Runner, have a nice day"
(me) "From Alaska?"
"From Utah"
(walks away)
I managed to roll my window up before cracking up laughing.

I got the rest of the way into SLC without incident and got to Uncle John's (my namesake) house just as dinner was being served. So, full of tacos and wonderful bean salad, I went to bed, ready for the Cabin the next day.

I got up and just appreciated the beauty of my hometown for a while, then got to work, from Craigslist I got a line on a used planer, and a used cordless finish nailer, I picked both of those up, saving about 500 bucks on new ones, got my safety gear, got some groceries, and headed up to the cabin.

While the cabin and Holiday Park are beautiful, the next 3 days of snow each day were really not, especially since one of my big upcoming projects was to insulate all the bedrooms and the roof, so yeah, it was cold. I started packing out dining room with a bunch of stuff from upstairs, and generally re-opening the cabin, getting the water all turned on, making sure there were no rodents, there always are, getting the phone hooked up, etc.

Snowing at my Cabin: