What I Did for Christmas Vacation

 It was hard for us to feel very Christmasy, missing our kids and home and cats so much.  On Christmas Eve we went to T. Roosevelt National Park for a run, our first since we were back from Idaho.   A storm was predicted, so we hurried to finish before it got nasty.  We saw three buffalo, one ridge away, otherwise no exciting wildlife encounters. 

Christmas morning we had our traditional eggs Benedict.  I made the most perfect poached eggs of my life, probably because I was making four, not eight or twelve like I usually do.  I had to use whole wheat bagels (first time I’ve ever bought a Wonder Bread product), and sliced them into thin little rafts.  Using a camp toaster, I managed to get four of them to various stages of incineration before I got it right (see a photo of the smoky mess below).  I’ve always been bad at bread.  Our kids say the garlic bread is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.  J

Next, I prepped the pork roast for Michael Chiarello’s Forever Roasted Pork, a foolproof way to make an inexpensive pork shoulder into a succulent treat.  After the pumpkin pie came out, in went the roast for seven hours.  Then we set about building our “addition” onto the back of the camper.  This will more than double our space and give us a place for boot dryers, dry goods overstock, crockpot, along with space for workouts, yoga, and shedding dirty, stinky work clothes.

For the subfloor, we used cast-off pallets set on smoothed out soil, then for insulation, we used grass straw raked from the field next to us.  I felt like Laura Ingalls gathering great armloads of dry grass and stuffing it into the pallets.  Next, we pieced the plywood floor.  The wind was coming up, so I hurried into the camper to finish dinner while Eric screwed down the boards and battened down the hatches.

Joey came over and we tucked into our Christmas feast—pork roast smothered in caramelized onions, chopped salad, baked sweet potatoes, broccoli and pie.  We settled in for a long winter’s nap, but the shrieking wind prevented that.  It was predicted to gust to 62 mph, so at first light, Eric moved all the big equipment he could to surround the camper and slow the wind.  It helped, but the camper was still shaking and rocking.

Not ones to be cooped up, we geared up (ski goggles and heavy mittens included) and went for a run on the little dirt road by the camper.  It was blowing so hard, running felt like swimming upstream, so I considered it an amped up workout. 

The rest of the week we fitted construction in between work, meals and manageable weather.  Around here, you can finish almost any description of an outdoor activity with the phrase “in the howling wind”.  Seriously.   We spend a fair amount of time just making the camper more winter-ready, with projects like taping a large sheet of insulation and plastic over the “nose” of the bed area to stop the condensate from forming on the inside of cabinets and walls.  It has worked well.

New Years was quiet, we had E-Bs and Mimosas for brunch and took a nice long run.  While we had some good times last year, we are happy to say good riddance to 2011 and are looking forward to a much better year.  We wish the same for you.  Happy New Year!