Literally! Our 120 gallon propane tank finally arrived, got filled, and connected to our on-demand water heater and we have the ability to take an actual hot shower after many moons of sponge baths! Here’s son Keith moving the tank to its new home.

Here’s the water heater we chose. With the recirculation pump, we don’t have to wait for hot water at the kitchen sink. You can see more about it at Amazon.

So far we’ve been having a very mild winter with only a few days with a low temperature below freezing. That’s due to change next week with nightly lows below zero. Brrr! Here are a couple of photos showing some mild winter scenery up here.

On the trail between son Keith’s and our place:

The Kootenai River about a quarter mile south of the Canadian border:

We took advantage of the cool, wet weather to burn the piles of brush that had accumulated as the land was being cleared (called “slash piles”):

Apparently Smokey Bear has been lying to me: It took several gallons of kerosene and half a box of matches to get this pile burning! It seemed very scary to burn such a large pile in the middle of a forest, but it’s perfectly legal and everybody does it–but only when everything has been drenched with snow and rain in the late fall/early winter which is one reason they can be so difficult to get started. Here’s the second pile burning after dark being watched closely by me:

We initially thought we would have a marshmallow and wienie roast, but it turned out we would have needed a 30 foot pole because when it was burning good that’s about as close as anybody wanted to get to it–it was really hot. This photo shows the size of the second pile before we really got it started. These are not small campfires!

As I write this, it’s the fourth day since we started the fire and it’s still smoking even though it’s mostly reduced to ashes.