First trip to camp in 2010

On Jan 21 - 24 Mike and Terri, Steve, Joe and Sean made a trip to camp. Mike and Terri pulled in on Thursday, the rest of us showed up Friday. I ran into some rain and sloppy roads on the way up. We all left Sunday the 24th. The Camp road down was okay, a couple inches of crusty snow but the tire tracks were down to the earth in most places. The weather was mostly clear and cold temps in the mid teens at night to mid 30's during the day. There was a lot of mouse droppings on the sink, cooking counter and table. It seems like the sticky traps don't work that well when they're frozen. There was one trap that had some fur stuck to it but no mouse.

When the camp warmed up Mike put out a couple more and they stayed sticky while we were there. I brought a few more sticky traps with me and also some poison blocks to toss behind the cupboard and stove. Over night on Friday, one of the sticky traps disappeared! We never found it or the creature who swiped it. My guess is he got partly stuck and dragged it somewhere cause we looked but never found it.

The ram pump pressure tower was cracked from ice. Mike called me Thursday and I said the spare was in the outhouse. He replaced it and the pump started working but no water up to the camp, the small 1/2" line was frozen somewhere. Sometime on Saturday the pump was restarted several times. I guess the ice jam was moving up the pipe and the pressure drop stopped the pump each time it moved. Late in the after noon Joe noticed the tank was filling up. No water inside because we still had ice issues. Finally in the evening the sink faucet started running so we had spring water. We closed the foot valve in the well on Friday and were using well water for washing until the spring line cleared up.

Mike and Joe shoveled the fire pit out as far as they could, it was solid ice at the bottom. We eventually got a fire going but it was a tough go for a while.

Sean used Mike's .22 rifle for some target practice while we nutzed with the fire. Terri read books and puttered around inside. In the evening Joe, Sean and Mike played Succotash or something like it! Sunday dawned cloudy with some wind and expecting lots of rain later in the day. I removed the pressure tower from the ram pump and laid the pump on it's side to drain. The pressure tower is inside the camp. We also drained the big tank and opened the well foot valve before leaving. We left camp about 10:30 AM. Here are some pictures:

Sean sits at table	Mike digs in fire pit	Front of camp	My FJ	Joe takes shovel to fire pit
Mike and Joe dig out fire pit	Pioneer woman washing stuff with pump	We had a few inches of crunchy snow on the ground	Crunchy snow path to outhouse	Out the kitchen side window, Joe and Mike watch fire
More card playing	Terri tries to keep warm	Guys playing Succotash	Sunday morning, nice warm fire	Sunday morning cloudy