10/7-9/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I noticed that Tim Wangen's gate was open so I drove in hoping to be able to talk to him. He was not around although there was a pickup parked there. I waited for a while and then Mike Dull drove up. We chatted for a while but I finally gave up on Tim and left.

I arrived at the property at 1:00. It was 60 degrees and there were no frogs in the can and no change to the rocks or the trench. After moving in, I trimmed some of the brush away from the temporary trail up the cliff. I will probably have visitors before the roadway is usable again so I thought I would improve the trail a little.

Next, I nailed the trim on the remaining front windows. It felt good to have the windows on the front all done. The jays and chipmunks helped me celebrate by coming around for peanuts.

I took down the scaffold planks and handrails for both scaffolds. I then took down the two scaffold brackets on the right side and plugged the bolt holes. With the ladder where it was, it was easy to reach those two. Then after thinking of a couple alternatives, I decided to move the scaffold tower intact in order to be able to reach the other four brackets. I took the ladder down but I left the 4x4 deck on. It was heavy but I was able to lift the corners of the tower enough to be able to slide them on the ground. Before I quit for the day, I had the tower moved into position so I could reach the next two brackets.

On Wednesday, I took down the two brackets and plugged the bolt holes. But this time I removed the 4x4 deck before I moved the tower to the third set of brackets. It made moving the tower a lot easier and it wasn't much of a job to dismantle and reassemble the deck. I removed the last two brackets, plugged the last two holes, took down all the scaffolding and put everything away. Then I put a few more things away inside and cleaned up a little.

It had been raining so the dirt wasn't so powder dry. I decided to backfill part of the trench so that at least you could walk to the building from the trail up the cliff. I fed the jays and chipmunks during the backfilling and got it filled enough so you can walk across the trench pretty well. I haven't quite decided what to do with the rocks that came out of the trench. I would like to keep them out and use them, but then I won't have enough dirt to fill the trench back up. To help with this problem, I dug quite a bit of dirt out from where the staircase will go. I'd like to have that down to bedrock anyway, and that will give me some of the extra dirt I will need.

On Thursday morning my muscles and joints were pretty stiff and sore. I am not used to doing that much digging any more. After breakfast, I went up and did some more backfilling. I also cleaned the trailer floor and beat the rugs. Then I loaded up a bunch of firewood for a Cub Scout camping trip. I took some pictures now that the front of the building is completely finished except for the rocks on the outside of the foundation wall. That is a project that I won't even start until we have moved into the building. I left for home at 1:30.