The old folks at home (mostly).
We got home at the end of March. The 80/20 for the month of April was dealing with snow/other stuff.
The first days of the month notes:
Wednesday
More stuff from car, Turned on water.
After lunch - Picked up winter’s mail and some Amazon purchases from November onward. Went to town for passport picture, and gas for snowblower. Came back for more snowblower Bosa Nova – wider path to parking spot for car, parking spot for snowblower, start of truck spot,
Thursday
Opened all the mail and sorted out tax stuff and action items. Cleared path to the burn barrel. Slow going, no sun today. Cut hair and showered. Juanita went to town to mail passport application to the States. I started on taxes.
After the taxes were done we settled into a daily routine of dealing with the accumulated snow and filling in the gaps with recreational reading.
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April 14 Notes:
We've been too busy travelling through snow, shovelling snow and blowing snow to write and post anything since Powell River.
We made it home on March 31 to a wall of snow. The wall had been moved from the grid road through the gate, closer to the house by a friend's tractor but that was just a start of what is needed. We've been digging our way in and around ever since. Took a couple of days to do our taxes for Canada and Juanita's for the U.S. Now we're in Edmonton for a couple of days to upgrade safety certs and the bi-annual respirator fit test.
Once the safety courses were done, we drove back to Meadow Lake over iffy roads. Normally we get up early and get on the road. This time we waited until mid-morning when the 511 reports suggested the highways were mostly plowed.
Then back to our routine of daily dealing with the snow. We made great progress then had setbacks from passing snowstorms. Once break in the routine was learning of a potatoe giveaway at the locaqql civic centre. We joined others there and took all we wanted from pallets of potatoes. For us that was a bankers box and a small bag. One group loaded an entire pallet to take to a community north of here.
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Toward the end of the month, we went to North Battleford for an appointment with the eye doctor as a step toward cataract surgery. Normally that would be a one-and-a-half-hour trip each way. We went a day early while the highway was plowed between blizzards. I cleared the driveway with the snow blower and we left at noon.
We stayed in a hotel. The next day, while waiting in the hotel room to make the drive to the eye appointment we got a call from the eye doc’s office. Are we still coming? Could we come early? We joined the other waiters in the crowded waiting room. There had been forty cancellations from people not wanting to drive there through a blizzard. The office staff was able to cram the leftovers into the morning, taking a snow half day off after lunch.
We found lunch and went back to the hotel. I drove through the blizzard to an afternoon bank appointment in North Battleford before returning to another night in the hotel. We hunkered down in the room, ordering pizza for supper. The next day there was a break between blizzards. When the highway app said the roads were plowed, we drove back home. The grid road had been plowed in the afternoon of the previous day so it was not near bare but neither was it as bad as our driveway. I took a chance and drove to the parking spot without stopping. The twelve inches of snow in our driveway didn’t stop us. Yay!
When I got out the snowblower to clear the driveway the snow was so wet it just piled up in front the snowblower. The snowblower stopped moving forward. The wheels spun and started working their way to the centre of the earth flinging mud from the driveway that was clear and dry only a couple of days before. Backing up and ramming the snow blockade resulted in some snow going into the snowblower augers. That snow just balled up and clogged the chute. I took the snow blower back to the shed. I’ll service it when the weather is nice but its job is done for this winter.
We mostly hunkered down at home for the rest of the month with a bit of strategic shovelling but mostly planning to just let the rising temperatures melt the snow.
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