I went uptown around 9 am. Not much warmer but it was light outside. A valley inversion was starting up and today it 'took', which made the day sunless and a bit gloomy all day.
I was later shopping this year as last year I was out and about around 6 am. This year it seemed there were less people out and about at all the stores. A salesman at Office Max told me the first hour was very busy then it died off. There were only a half dozen vehicles in the parking lot when I was there after 10 am.
I wandered about and ended up buying nothing - unlike last year. I found I can buy the camera I am interested in over $20 less online than in a store. None of the DVDs interested me. Either I had already seen the movies, else they were lame movies I had no interest in. I did see a number of people each buying a number of DVDs.
I visited the Sportsman Ski Haus store. Not too busy and John, a salesman, was very helpful and knowledgeable about cross-country skis, snowshoes, and back country GPS units. All of what I want and all of which cost mucho $$$.
Then it was on back to home. I found three more dead pocket gophers. The temperature by mid afternoon reached 37 F so I was able to dig through the ground's frozen top layer to find new gopher tunnels and set more traps. I have about 3/4 of the hayfield 'cleared'. It doesn't look like I will be able to reach the southern property boundary this year. Hmmm... I am like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill over and over.
I heard a shotgun blast from over on Wyatt's property. Kelly said it was fairly close to my fence. No idea if that person got his deer. Kelly got a 4 point buck yesterday before Thanksgiving dinner. Hunting season ends Sunday at sundown so Kelly took whichever buck came by yesterday. It wasn't the larger one he was trying to get. He also has a doe tag.
I am working on the loading corral again. I have 14 feet on the south side left to re-fence. The remaining two posts are solid but I decided to replace them as all the rest of the posts are now railroad ties. The other day I had taken down the 14 ft of the old fence and today I removed one of the posts and dug a new hole for a railroad tie. Because I am using wooden corral panels as my new fence the post holes are in different locations. I ended up digging a 30 inch deep hole for my new post. Lots of rock in this spot as you can see in the photo later.
This tie is the same length as the others I put in the ground this past Summer: 10 feet long and 9 inches on one side and about 6 inches on the the other. Either I am stronger or this tie is not as heavy as the other ties as I was able to - relatively - easily drag this tie from my pile of ties to the hole and then lift it into the hole. For some reason the previous owner hadn't removed two spikes from the tie so I had to pound them out before using the tie.
It was dark by the time I got the rocks filled back in the ground around the tie and tamped down to make the tie solid. One more post to go. It will be a race to see if I get it done before the ground really freezes or it snows.
I felt better once I got the railroad tie in the ground. I actually did some work today.
Photo 1: yes, this pile of rocks came out of that hole
Photo 2: The hole is 30 inches deep - though it doesn't look like it.
Photo 3: railroad tie before I put it in the hole.
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