Winter at the Salmon River

'Tis the day before Thanksgiving and and all through the night .. oh wait, that's a different holiday, although not to far away !

It sure looks like Christmas though, and if we won't have it than, we are having it now .. a white Thanksgiving!

Temperatures started to drop over the weekend, followed by snow on Sunday night, all in all a good 4 inches or better!

I must say, although the snow at Joseph Plains was pretty, it really turned the area around here in a stunning winter-wonderland.
Maybe it's because you look up to the mountains from down here, whereas we were on the mountain itself over there and didn't see much below us.

We walked down the slippery driveway (fortunately I had saved our snow-boots) to the road, where the view of the river was especially spectacular!

We put a drop-off box at the gate for UPS and FedEx because there's no way they'll make it up the driveway ..

And here's us, all snug and warm, nestled against the 'big' house:

Earlier that week I had walked up the canyon towards a little  waterfall halfway the creek and made a picture of it. 

Yesterday I went again, this time for a 'snow-shot' ..

     

 By the way, this property is guarded by a squirrel!

Trying to look tough here!

In the meantime, the crew has worked on a whole bunch of different projects ..
Besides all the tree-cutting and repairs on the front gate that I showed last week, they repaired a break in the main water-pipe, next to the house:

The pipes are badly corroded and there were several leaks inside and out, but it looks like they're finally all taken care of.

James did the inside, closest to the pump, where hoses had sprung leaks also:

We also took care of a few repairs and modifications inside the RV, James gave me a shelve in the storage chubby-hole behind the TV:

Everything used to be piled up on top of each other and things were constantly sliding around ..

Look how neat. Much better!

And how about this one .. every time the front door was opened all the cold air from the outside would stream in ..

Well, we created a 'hossie', as we call it in (the northern part of) Holland, a sort of mud-room, by hanging some heavy velvet curtains from a (bendable) ceiling-rod:

      

Not the best picture, but they are a nice 'evergreen' green!

(Left is as seen from the inside, right is from outside looking in)

The last step of our door-steps to the ground is, depending on the site, often a little high so James created another 'landing' (and screwed the mat on it, since it has a tendency to get blown away)

They burned all the cut tree branches and other trash ..

They also dug a trench for the electricity that has to go up to the new-house site and Don has been leveling and smoothing several areas all around us ..

Eventually, they ran out of projects though, which is getting to be a real problem.
We still do not have any definite house plans, which means we can't move forward and we now actually have to lay off the crew for a while. Which is not nice, because we did promise them work and they, and their families, rely on it.
Let's hope that when Sam and Ronnie are coming up here for a week on December the 3d, that something will be decided ..