Donnelly Creek arrival

May 16-22
We arrived in Delta Junction late Monday afternoon, in a dust storm (glacial dust) that required headlights. Wind is a way of life here it seems but fortunately we don’t get the dust down at our cabin. After getting our vehicle and some campground supplies, in town we headed down to Donnelly Creek State Park campground. It is a very nice campground with 12 sites, water for campers from a pump and 2 of the nicest vault toilet restrooms I’ve ever seen in a public campground. Our cabin is bigger than we expected – 10 x 15 – and has a decent size fridge/freezer and a 4-burner stove with an oven, another unexpected surprise. Here's the cabin as we found it (we added the flag). Later you'll see lots of changes.

Much cleaning up before moving in and then the projects to make it more livable for everyone who is ever here began. We acquired a small sink and put that in the counter top; our water comes from the creek (potable from cubes in town), so Tom put in a dock to walk out on to make filling the bucket easier; we’ve added a deck on 2 sides of the cabin that were delivered to us from one of the lakes; and we’ve made stone steps up to the cabin door and have begun steps up to the deck.

Take a look at the size of the stones in the attached picture. Yes, we hoisted them up into a pickup and into place on the ground without help of a crane. Let me just say that I use to think the full 5-gallon solar shower was heavy! All this is still a work in progress.

The weather has been windy, windy, windy, but sunny. Saturday the wind finally quite and it was actually hot for several hours. Mosquitoes are not a problem yet and those that we have seen are big and slow and easy to kill. Our wildlife and bird list so far includes caribou, moose, porcupine, buffalo, one bald eagle, many robins and extremely friendly gray jays, warblers and white crowned sparrow.

The week ended with our first dutch oven cobbler which was delicious. For entertainment we watched a couple movies on the computer since I'm able to charge it up on a converter in the pickup. Evening walks provide lovely views...here's our backyard.

Last, but not least, the 24-hour light. It actually has not been bothersome, perhaps since after 8 hours of hauling rocks and building porches we are having no trouble sleeping! It is unique though to see the sun almost, but not quite, set at 10:30pm.