Murmur Creek Observatory: Broken Stuff & Early Easter Egg Hunt

What a strange week since Christmas,

Got home the night of the 25th to find around 5" of new snow.

No big deal, the next day we went to work,
I fired up the 4 wheeler in the garage put it in gear and hit the gas to start plowing.

On my way out of the garage door I hooked the plow blade on the door frame and snapped one of the pins that holds the plow on.

Meanwhile Pat is running the snowblower working on the path to the observatory,
she was able to find one of our hanging solar Chinese lantern that had fallen do to snow load.

Finding the lantern with the snowblower wasn't good!

It wrapped in the auger and broke the shear pin,
so we are less then a hour into snow removal and all our equipment is broken down.

Regrouping in the house, I started to unpack our new play toy,
Pat give me a GoPro camera with a package of mounting brackets,

we started with filming a red squirrel eating sunflower seeds.
see video below

Once at warmed up enough we decided to run out to the storage building for the parts we need to fix all our broken stuff.

Putting the windshield mount on the camera we climbed into the jeep and filmed the drive out,
it's about 10 minutes long and gives a good look at our everyday drive to get to our vehicles.
see video below

Returning home with parts and the chainsaw we stopped and removed the low hanging tree that we could hardly get under,
then home to fixed the 4 wheeler plow.

The snowblower needs more attention then I want to give it that day
so it's up to the plow to do most of the work,
after a few hours of plowing including getting stuck several times things were looking pretty good.

Before calling it a day we pulled down the
weather station unit to clean off ice
for the second time this winter,
after reinstalling it we were done for the day.

Back indoors I decided to look at the video we shot throughout the day!

That would be the exact time I realized I no longer know where the camera is.

The search began,
it included looking in the jeep, garage, house
then back out to the storage building.

Now in the dark we continued with flashlight trips up and down the driveway
and path to the observatory finely giving up around 9:00 pm.

The new day brought a new search,
this included some Google searches and email to GoPro to see if the camera
could be found with a metal detector.

Answers were mixed at best, the guy from GoPro said
it would have to be a very good detector if it was to work at all.

Now for the metal detector story.

I have always shopped pawn shops,
so I'm in my mid 30's I had a pocket full of money and a day off in some small town USA.

I decide to make a trip to the closest pawn shop to look around, the great part about pawn shops is you never know what you need till you find it.

That day a metal detector caught my eye, hell what mid 30's guy could pass that up, after a little negotiations it was mine.

This is one of those buys that when you get home your wife gives you the look,
well I got that look but explained we could have some fun with this new found item.

Her response was you'll never use it,
to prove her wrong I packed it twice for winter vacations, once to Florida and then Costa Rica and never used it.

Three winters ago I was asked to find a underground gas tank
cover for the owners of Lockport in Lutsen.

The cover came off during snowplowing and was somewhere in a large snow pile,
I found it in short order and charged them lunch, I was well on my way to locating items for fun and profit.

Back on the shelf it went waiting for the next big opportunity,
2 day's ago it was pulled of the shelf and prepared it for service and the search was on!

I put about two hours into the search the first day to no avail,
I search enough to be sure I wasn't going to drive over it with the jeep but still worried I might find it with the snowblower.

Well Wednesday Pat and I went looking again,
this time searching the snow piles humped up by the 4 wheeler plow, we started knocking the tops off the piles so the metal detector could check deeper into the banks and we found it within a hour.

The camera is in good shape and still works fine, the only damage was to the suction cup mounting bracket,

no big deal.

Between the searching we also fixed all our broken stuff so we're ready again for snow.

Christmas was good with the exception of mom's dog having health trouble that could not be fix so she had to put Henry down on Christmas Eve, very sad.

We took care of Henry a few years back for a shot time, he wasn't much of a woodsy dog, more a city slickers.

We had him down on the dock and he fell in the water, I know some dogs don't swim but I figured all dog at least float.

Not Henry he sank like a brick,
I look over to see what happened and he was standing on the bottom of the lake looking puzzled.

Pat jump right into the water and save his ass,
she was not going to let that dog drown on her watch, I would have helped but I was paralyzed in laughter.

One last item for now,

today is our wedding anniversary, 28 years of married bliss.

I've had people calling and emailing her all day to tell her how lucky she is to be married to me!

I've been telling here this for 28 years and at times I think she forget just how lucky she is,
so feel free to call, text or email her and remind her,
thanks for your help on this issue.

Our test video of the red squirrel