11/1-3/05 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up, I stopped in at Doug's RV and bought a gallon of antifreeze. It started snowing when I reached 2600 feet. There was snow on the ground starting at 3500 feet, and there was snow and slush on the road from 3900 feet all the way to the property.

There was about 2 inches of snow on the ground and a light rain when I arrived at 12:45 but I was able to drive all the way up to the trailer. After moving in, I got my full rain suit on and went out to winterize the trailer. I poured the gallon of antifreeze into the trailer tank and then started strategizing about how to fix the problem. Since I knew that the 12 volt power to the trailer worked when I hooked up the battery, the problem either had to be in the pump itself, the pressure switch in the pump, the pump switch in the trailer, or in some part of the pump circuit. I decided that I didn't want to diagnose any of those things in the rain so I tried to think of another way.

After considering several alternatives, I decided to get a hose and siphon the antifreeze directly into the plumbing. I put a bucket under the drain spigot of the trailer water tank and drained out the antifreeze I had just poured in. Then I got a funnel and filled up a hose that took nearly the whole gallon. Then I attached the male end of the hose to the trailer water supply connection, put the other end in the bucket with the rest of the antifreeze, and set the bucket on top of the trailer.

When I turned on the faucets, nothing happened. Evidently, too much of the hose was lower than the trailer plumbing. So I went back out in the rain, went up to the cabin and got a ladder. I hoisted the bucket up into the rafters of the snow shed, and coiled up all of the hose on top of the trailer so that it ran continually downhill to the trailer water supply connection.

Then when I tried the faucets inside, they ran OK. I ran each faucet until antifreeze came out. That used up almost all of the antifreeze. I disconnected everything and put everything away again and was happy that the trailer was finally winterized. The temperature was in the mid 30's so the job needed to be done.

At one point during the work, a pair of very soggy gray jays came flying through the rain for peanuts. They seemed very eager to grab as many peanuts as they could take and then beat it. I didn't see them again for the rest of the week.

I was happy to see that there was no shrew in the trap and all the peanuts were still in place. I went to work and insulated the last two seams on both walls of the bedroom and I had time to nail one seam on each wall before I quit for the day.

On Wednesday I removed the screens from the inside of the trailer which completed the switch from summertime use to wintertime use of the trailer. Up at the cabin, I was happy to find again that there was no shrew or evidence of mice. I nailed the last seam on both walls of the bedroom and then I chinked the last two seams on the Grid 1 wall and one seam on the Grid E wall. That used up all the mortar mix that I had left and it leaves the one seam on the Grid E wall plus the closet wall to do next spring.

A winter storm was predicted to come in overnight so I decided to leave an electric heater running all night to keep the mortar from freezing.

There was still quite a bit of daylight left so I went down to the old log pile and stacked the rest of the old logs over to one side to leave a big open area for parking and for the Boy Scouts to pitch their tents. While I was doing that, Karen Arnold stopped by and I showed her what I had done in the cabin. She hadn't seen it for a long time.

On Thursday morning, Ellen called me to make sure I knew about the approaching storm. I told her that I knew about it and planned to leave early in order to avoid most of it. I went up and cleaned the logs that I had chinked. Again there was no shrew. Then I packed up and left for home at 9:45. It was snowing all the way from the property to the other side of the pass, but I followed a snowplow over the top and I had no problem getting home.