6/10-12/08 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

This was going to be a special week. Herb and Marie Roberts and Ray Ternes were coming up for a long-awaited visit. There was new snow in the pass as I went over, but the road was bare and wet. I arrived at the property at 1:10.

After moving in and having lunch, I tried out the new Bosch roto-hammer I had just bought. I was amazed and pleased that it had no trouble drilling a quarter inch hole in the granite almost as fast as a normal drill goes through wood. Now it will be easy to anchor things to the granite where I need to and also to anchor things to the concrete block walls of the crawlspace.

Next I went to work and finished up the two ramps by decking them with OSB and screwing it down. I had to cut away some more brush at the feet of the ramps and I also cut away the brush on the trail to the privy. I was satisfied that the place was pretty well wheelchair accessible now.

I spent the rest of the day inside the cabin putting things away and cleaning up for the guests. A major benefit of having guests is that the place gets cleaned up once in a while as a result.

During the afternoon, I was visited a couple times by the family of four gray jays. One of the juveniles now has the courage to land on my hand and pick up a peanut. He is still a little bewildered as to what to do with it, but eventually he flies off with it. The other one just watches as his parents and sib take the peanuts from me. I also fed a chipmunk a few times when he came around. And, when I picked up some plywood from the pile on the porch, I disturbed the packrat who is living under it. I saw him scurry to a safer place. One of these weeks I will take that pile apart and evict the packrats. Then they'll probably move under the porch.

On Wednesday morning it was cool, very windy, but dry. I started a fire in the wood stove to warm the place up. I spent most of the morning sprucing up the cabin and feeding the chipmunk. At about 11:30 I left and drove to the 59er Diner to meet with and have lunch with Herb, Marie, and Ray.

We had a great conversation over lunch and then we headed back to the cabin. I deliberately drove past the driveway and stopped at the outcrop so they could see the outcrop and the big rock I had told them about. Then we turned around and drove onto the property. Herb wanted to drive up the hill as far as he could. I told him that I get my truck all the way up there and that if he wanted, he could drive all the way up too. He gave it a try and had no trouble driving all the way up. There was just enough room on the side to open up his wheelchair ramp. He had no trouble getting out.

The three of them said that their first impression was that the building was bigger and higher than they had imagined. It does look pretty high when you are right up against the foundation wall and you look up at it.

Herb rolled across the ditch containing the electrical conduit on a couple planks and then proceeded up the trail toward the privy to the base of the ramp to the cabin. And, from there he rolled up into the cabin with a little help but with no problem.

We had a nice visit, took a bunch of pictures, and went out on the porch for a while. The chipmunk showed up so we fed him a few peanuts. It started getting too cold out there so we went back in. I built another fire in the stove which warmed us up nicely.

When it came time for them to leave, Herb backed his van back down the road with guidance from Ray, Marie, and me, and had no trouble getting back down. Ray wanted to see the pond on the neighbor's property that I had told them about so he and I went up into the woods to have a look at it. Since we were so close to the spring, we decided to continue up so Ray could have a look at the springbox. He also was interested in seeing some of the large tree specimens on the property. When we got back, they loaded up and left. It was about 5:30.

I went to work and dismantled both ramps and put all the material away. In the process I dropped some of the OSB panels and hurt my right index finger a little. It still bends and works OK but something got screwed up inside. It feels like it will be OK after a little time. I quit for the day at about 6:30.

On Thursday morning, I chiseled a channel in the end of a log in the Grid A1 corner of the loft in order to route the Romex cable that feeds the string of receptacle outlets up there. The electrical inspector had approved the way I was going to run the wires through the corner up there, but he was a little concerned about that one place. There was about a 6" section that he wasn't convinced would keep the cable away from contact with the mortar. I had told him that I would chisel a channel for the wire to make sure it wouldn't contact the mortar. That is what I did.

Next I reconfigured the two breakers I had installed in the service panel. I had showed a picture of how I had wired the panel to Brian Kemly and he told me it would be neater if those two breakers were at the bottom rather than at the top. After moving them and looking at it, I must agree that he was right. I can still follow Ross' suggestion of keeping separate those breakers that will routinely be turned off when no one is in the cabin from those that will always be left on. This pair will be among those that will be left on, so the others can be at the top of the panel.

I fed the chipmunk a couple more times and left for home at 1:40. It was a fun week.