Who needs power?

So this past week has been very interesting...we lost electricity, water, heat, Internet and telephone. We haven't even had school since Tuesday. I even had to distill water from melting ice. We found a puddle with ice still on the bottom of it so that stuff from the soil wouldn't seep back up. Then, Alex made a make shift distiller. First, we ran the water through coffee filters to get out any large particulates. Next we boiled the water to kill the bacteria (like from dog poop). Then, we ran it through the coffee (when we had power) to steam and condense it. Finally, it went through the Britta filter because that is a charcoal filter to get out any last stuff. We even had to fill up the water tank in the toilet to flush it. Good thing Alex was here or Puffin and I would just have been drinking dirty snow!!

Here is the bucket that I am storing my water in -


Candlelight is not that romantic when you even need to cook by it! Luckily, we have gas stoves so I could just use a match and light the burners. My LL Bean hat came in use wonderfully so I could actually see what I was cooking.
Here I am modeling it for you (those are little LED lights on the front) -
I also brought Alex up to the airport today on a 4-wheeler and got a bit of frost bit on my hands. They are fine now, but they feel and look like they are sun burnt mostly so kinda red with little white blisters.

Before we lost power and had to go all "roughing-it", Alex and I had a really good visit. Here are some picks of us actually walking on the river. It was only last Sunday we took these pics and since the temp has been so crazy the river is already melting!! (I will try and get picks of that)



Here is where two pieces of ice butted up against each other -



Here it is up close -
Wicked cool swirls in ice there huh?

This is Long Bluff from the River. I pick berries on top of it and fish beneath it in the fall.

To show how safe the ice is, here is a snow mobile pulling a sled riding on top of it -

No Blog would be complete without a pic of Puffin - so here she is running on the snow on top the river. She eventually got cold and tired and Alex carried her in her little backpack (he looked VERY manly :) )


Well more adventures and pics will be coming soon. Everyone bothered me about not updating my blog often enough so I will really try and work on that. Also, I had a wonderful time when I was home - so thanks for making me feel so loved!!