Hi All,

Another Bush Lunch story, this one a little better planned than my last one.

Yesterday I was again tasked to travel in a forest access road to do some work. The difference from my previous trip was that I took along a Svea 123R stove that I recently bought off e-Bay and a large tin can to boil water in (the stove fits perfect in the can).

I stopped for lunch at a marshy waterbody called, "Moosehead Lake" and set-up the little stove with my boil-in-a-bag meal, in lakewater in the can.

I noticed something moving across the narrows of the lake about 600m away, at first I thought it was an injured goose or heron, but soon I realized it was the head of a young bull moose. I ran for the binoculars in the truck but only got one more quick glimpse of the moose as it exited the water and entered the bushline. Neat, a real moosehead in Moosehead Lake!

Here is a picture of the weedy end of the lake, sorry there is no moose in the photo but it swam across at the narrow section beyond the standing dead trees.



The weather was rapidly changing and a thunderstorm rolled in quickly from the west so I jumped back in my truck to hide from the rain and lightning. The storm only lasted about 5 minutes but did it ever wake-up the bugs, I had black flies, mosquitos and horse-flies after me. Even bug dope was not very effective, I should have worn a long sleeve shirt.

The Svea stove worked much better than the cheap alcohol stove I used the other day. Here is a picture of the set-up just before I had lunch.



Lunch was good (lamb and vegtable stew, with caramel apple slices for dessert) and I put some bottled water on for tea. That heated up quickly but I tried to turn the stove off with the can still on the burner and the can toppled into the lake! I had one more bottle of water and the stove heated it up fast, this time I used leather gloves to take the pot off prior to fiddling with the stove. The Earl Grey tea was the best part of the meal.

So this little lunch adventure took about 1/2 an hour and was a nice break during a work day.

Take care,

Mike

where can one acquire one of these stoves?

Hi,

I was in the bush again today, this time an afternoon shift so I had supper in the field (same concept, just different time). Tonight it was a pork type stew, pretty-good but I am really not very picky. Even though I drank my instant coffee from this mornings Tim Hortons cup, it was no where near as good, yuck!

I set-up just upstream of a small Hydro-electric dam on a medium size river, everything worked great and I am getting used to the heat priming of the Svea 123R stove.



I saw a small black bear (maybe 100lbs) on the powerline corridor that leads away from the dam site, the bear was happly eating grass.

I had the company of 2 beavers and a merganser duck over supper.

Bad picture of one of the beavers.



On the way home I saw a young cow moose standing in a dry beaver pond, it was about 400m away so you have to trust me that the "dot" in the centre of the photo below is actually a moose!



I really need a better camera; got home about 22:30hrs.

Mike

Hi Erik,

These Svea/Optimus stoves were made in Sweden for a long time but I think the few new ones on the market now are made in the Far East.

I bought mine off of e-Bay, you can find them here http://sporting-goods.search.ebay.com/svea_Sporting-Goods_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQfromZR40QQsacatZ382 There are both new and used ones listed.

If you Google Svea, there is lots of information on the internet, on the ETS Forum also.

Mike

Nice! I wish I had your job.

-Blast

When I read your Blog I am often envious of your career Blast; experiments, discovery, world travel, CHEERLEADERS!

Mike