Weeks two and three of this year’s trip to Exploits were much sunnier!

John and Moss arrived, with Heather, Bob and Eleanor. The day they arrived was cloudy and as soon as the boat entered the cove, the heavens opened and it poured. And poured. Then it rained some more. We hauled everything up to the house in the cold, cold rain. Then we ate supper and sat around shivering for the evening. It was a rough start.

The next day we decided to remedy the wood stove situation. There was no way we were going to be cold and wet for two weeks. You see, in the large house, there had been no wood stove for several years. The old one became unsafe to use and had been removed and the new one was in the other house (built by my late grandmother to serve as her own little cabin). The little house is not as nice a place and not well-made, so we use it infrequently. The plan has always been to move that stove over to the large house, but finding the skill, funds and frankly, time, to do it have been obstacles.

This time we started in and gave ‘er. The stove was dismantled, flipped 90 degrees and fit through the doors with a minimal of juggling. Those suckers are HEAVY!. John, Bob and I hauled it over. Then we discovered that the stove pipe in the house did not fit with the stove pipe attachment of the new stove. Damn.

Took measurements, photos and a walk down the trail and knocked on the door of Judith and Jon, some friends to whom we had given a shoring for their house the year before. Judith wandered up into her attic and came down with the exact piece we needed!

So the chimney was put together only to discover that many, many adjustments were required, as the old chimney needed a replacement piece or two, had settled and the joints needed tightening up and custom cuts and crimping were required to piece everything back together. Then someone (Bob – the family climbing genius) had to go up on the roof and fit things in place up there, adjusting the chimney cap and checking the connections. The chimney was also swept, since it was easy to do so. This process, including smoke tests, took three days. Three very dirty, sooty days. The result?

The stove installation also served the purpose of satisfying that Murphy’s Law Corollary, that, if what can go wrong, will, then if you plan for things to be wrong, they won’t be. The weather for the remainder of the trip was largely quite good.

Children (and dogs) swam:

People rowed, hiked and read:

Roses bloomed, the sun shone and fun was had!

Then we had to go…

We’ll be back again soon!