10/14-16/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up, I was delayed by a fatal accident at milepost 39. After waiting in line for a while, a woman told me that she knew a way around through the mountains. I followed her for an hour from Index to Skykomish over gravel roads that went as high as 3000 feet. It was worth it, though because Highway 2 was closed for most of the day.

I stopped in at Tim's again and this time he was there. He said he would be at my place within an hour to fill up the trench. I arrived at the property at 2:00 and barely had time to unload my gear before Tim showed up. The weather was beautiful. I skipped lunch, disconnected the hoses and took them out of Tim's way. He proceeded to backfill the trench and grade the roadway. He rebuilt the rock retaining wall on the outside of the hairpin turn and even dug out a big rock on the roadway near the front of the trailer. That rock caused the van to high center so I am glad he dug it out.

While Tim was working, I fed the jays and chipmunks and caught a frog . Tim said he might be able to dig the rest of the trench to the spring yet this year and that I should get some colored tape and mark the route for him. After he left, I swept the loft floor using the damp sawdust from my log ripping station as sweeping compound.

On Wednesday it rained cats and dogs all day. I felt really lucky that I got the trench filled in while the weather was nice. I did some work smoothing out the roadway and dug a small drainage ditch to divert the water running off the roof so it runs over the side of the roadway instead of down the middle of it.

The next project I intend to take on is to rodent-proof the building and evict the tenants that are already living inside. The chipmunks go in and out at will but I don't think they have any nests inside. I know there is a pack rat living in the toolbox in the crawl space, and I am sure there are several mice inside also. My plan is to provide an escape route through a pipe in the foundation and make it so that they can get out but not back in. One idea is a dryer vent cover which has a gravity operated flap. I think a mouse could push it open from the inside but be unable to get back in from the outside.

I chose a pipe that I think will work and I made a platform in front of in on the inside. Then I put a few peanuts inside the pipe and a couple on the platform in front of it. Pretty soon, a little chipmunk came over, took the peanuts, went into the pipe, and went out the other side. That was great. It worked exactly according to plan.

I also did some experimenting to see what the little guy could hang on to. I put a slanted sheet of galvanized sheet metal on the work bench, and held a handful of peanuts so that the chipmunk had to climb up the sheet metal to get them. He wasn't able to hang on to the metal if it is slanted very much so I think that instead of using a dryer vent cover I'll just have a vertical piece of sheet metal with a hole fit over the end of the pipe.

I had enough hardware cloth to make and install rodent-proof screens on four of the six crawl space vent openings. I'll do the other two next week. I'll also put fine mesh screen over them later on to make them ant-proof. It's too bad I don't have one kind of screen that is both mouse-proof and ant-proof. The ants can go right through the hardware cloth and the mice can chew right through window screen.

I swept out the first floor of the building using the ripping sawdust for sweeping compound. It really works well to keep the dust down but I wear my dust mask anyway.

On Thursday it downpoured again. I spent the morning making a plumbing connection between the two copper water pipes inside the building. I decided that it would be a good idea to have water running through both pipes all the time starting as soon as I can. That way, nothing stagnant will grow inside them. I made a loop of 1 inch copper pipe that connects the two ends. I didn't have my torch with me so I'll have to solder it next week.

I had planned to winterize the trailer, but the weather forecast was for a warm front to come through for the next week or so. I decided to wait until next week. I left for home at 1:15.