August 7, 2022 (Sunday)

Slept a little later this morning.  It continues to pour down rain.  Bernie (our closest neighbor) came to visit for a little bit and decided to lead us down the trail to get out so that we might start getting familiar with it.  The mud puddles were pretty big in places but at least there is a solid bottom to them!  We went as far as the gravel pit, which he said was still five miles from town.  On the way back, we detoured to another neighbor’s property, not realizing they were there!  So we got to meet Matt & Christina and their two boys.  Nice people.  He is retired from the Anchorage fire department and she was born and raised in Fairbanks.  She also seems to know a lot about the local berries.  I look forward to picking her brain and maybe some berries with her!

Continue to unpack what we have here and sorting through stuff.  The problem is that Orville & Jackie left A LOT of stuff behind, so that we have to go through that stuff before we can inject our own into the mix.  Nothing life changing, just a process that takes a bit.  Burning some stuff as we go…

Came in from working outside and moving stuff around to find that we had a chimney fire in the BlazeKing stovepipe!  Shut everything down and stayed up for awhile to let things cool down.  Don’t think there was any damage to anything but kreosote was definitely oozing down the stovepipe and it was warm and smoking a little upstairs.  Kevin plans to get up on the roof tomorrow to make sure the chimney is cleaned out good.  He is supposedly scheduled to head back out of town this week.  I’m so glad he was here when that happened!  I might have burned the place down!