Long time, no post...

Well, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks and haven't really had a chance to sit down and post anything.

To update my last post, we borrowed a battery from a friend to see if the car we found worked or not, and it worked perfectly. Went to Walmart and bought a new battery and charger and now Eli has a working battery operated car. He still hasn't gotten the driving part down perfectly, but he should be able to enjoy it for several years. The weight limit on it is 130lbs so Cathy can even get in and drive it!

Still getting things ready to go on our Elk hunting trip to Wyoming. I haven't been working out as regularly as I would have liked, but I got in a 6 mile jog Saturday morning with some pretty good hill work coming up out of the canyon so I guess I'm in about the same shape I was last year and I didn't really have any problems then.

We ended up buying a new battery for the trailer and that seemed to be the only real issue so far. We hooked it up and towed it to Post and back so Cathy could get used to towing it, and then we parked it out in the front yard and spent the night in it last night.

Since we are rookies at camping out in a travel trailer it was a good test run for us. Cathy had a note pad and we made a list of things that we needed to bring with us since it will be about an hours drive to any kind of civilization where we will be camping out in Wyoming. Cathy cooked dinner in the trailer and we had the fridge running on propane and it even got cool enough to run the heater and make sure it worked.

We didn't sleep that great as the coyotes were howling and yapping much of the night and our dogs would then run off barking at them. Eli had a hard time going to sleep because he was so excited about staying in the camper, but he finally did.

This also let me make sure I could get the trailer leveled out and set up correctly. I ended up having to use 5" of boards under the near side tires to get it level since it is on somewhat of a side hill. Hopefully we won't be staying anywhere that we need more than that. I cut 2 - 2" boards and 1 - 1" board so that gives me some variables.

Here's another picture of the trailer all leveled up.Since our pickup has just over 125,000 miles on it, I've been trying to do some preventive maintenance now that we will be towing the travel trailer about 2,500 miles round trip with some pretty good elevation changes along the way. A few weeks ago I changed out the front differential fluid and the auto transfer case fluid on the 4 wheel drive and yesterday I changed out the rear differential fluid. It seems crazy, but all 3 of them use a different type and weight of oil. The auto transfer case is a specific fluid made by GM that you have to buy at the dealer. Changing out the front differential and transfer case fluids was pretty easy, but I was a little nervous changing the rear differential since you have to pull the case off the back of the axle. I took a couple pictures of the rear differential when I had the pan off. Here's the pan after I got it cleaned up and the gasket all cleaned off. Some folks say that you can just use RTV silicone to make a new gasket, but I went ahead and bought a new gasket and put a very light layer of RTV silicone down to get it to stay put while I put it back on. I was surprised at how much metal shavings were on the magnets on both the front and rear differentials. At first you don't even realize that they are metal, it looks more like a grey mud or silt, but it sticks to the magnets so it must be metal. Reading some stuff online, it sounds like that isn't abnormal though. The round washer looking thing in the pan is the magnet.
Lastly, I'll throw in some gratuitous pictures of a dead pig. I was able to go by the land and get some work done over labor day weekend and had a chance to hunt one evening and the next morning. I shot about a 75lb pig (that's the standard 2' cooler in the background for perspective) and quartered it up there on the spot. Here's the pig taking a rest before going in the cooler.
I usually don't take any pictures of my field dressing process, but I get a few questions about it so I thought I would try to take a couple pictures and see if they would help explain it at all. I won't post them as an image here on the blog, but I'll just post a link so you can click on it if you want to see. (Warning - it is fairly graphic)

http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album07/piggie_half

http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/album07/piggie_half2

The picture is after I've skinned one side and then removed the front shoulder, hind quarter and the back strap as well as removed the ribs on this pig since it didn't end up with the traditional hole in them. If you know what you are looking for you can see how small the lungs are on a pig and how they are nearly completely covered by the front leg. After I'm done with one side, I flip it over and repeat the same process, but I didn't take a picture of that since it was pretty much just a pile of guts and bones left.

I didn't get any standout trail camera pictures last month. I'm going to try to get back down there one time this week and get some food plots planted and I need to change out the batteries in a couple of the cameras. After that I'm planning on pretty much staying away to give the mature bucks a chance to feel like they are safe on my property. Not sure if it will work or not, but since I'll be pretty busy anyway it will be worth a try.

Probably won't post again until we get back from Wyoming. Hopefully I'll have some pictures of a dead elk to post, but talking with my friends up there, the animals aren't in their usual spots since they've had such a cool wet summer so things aren't looking that promising. We should have a good time with our friends regardless though.

I think that's about it for now. Nathan