9/16-18/11 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Friday through Sunday.

I arrived at noon and was promptly greeted by Bert. I drove directly up to the cabin because I had brought a bed frame with me. I unloaded the bed frame and my gear and treated Bert to hugs, biscuits, and gravy. Too bad Ernie missed out.

After I backed the truck down and parked it, I had lunch and a short nap. Then I went to work to prepare the place for the scouts. I had gotten a message that they would arrive at 8:00PM so that gave me some time to get the important things done to be ready for them.

The first thing I wanted to do was to hang a temporary door for the bathroom. I found some old cabinet hinges at home which I figured would do the job in spite of being rather small. They would work much better than screw eyes and bent screws that I had planned on using.

I measured the sizes of the openings I wanted to fill with doors and went down to the crawl space to check the sizes of the old doors that I have. One nice six-panel white door exactly fit the rough opening for the bathroom. I thought it was going to be too big but when I mounted the hinges and hung the door, I was pleased to find that it closed nicely in the rough opening with less than an eighth of an inch clearance. It pays to keep your framing exactly plumb, square, and level. Or maybe it was just another case of serendipity.

In any case, I mounted an old door knob set I had and then chiseled a recess in the stud for the latch bolt and didn't bother with a strike plate. Then I screwed two shims to the stud for a door stop and the job was done. The door worked perfectly.

Next I hung another old door in the frame for the utility room. This one was about 8 inches too narrow, so I screwed a 2x6 on the opposite stud to take up most of that gap. I wanted to provide a surface for the boys to hang their charts on. I also made a crude latch out of a piece of pipe so that the door could be latched shut so they could write on it without having it swing open.

Finally, I screwed another door in front of the pantry. This one didn't swing and was only there to provide more easel space.

I moved the refrigerator from the living room, where I had it stored during the drywall installation, to the utility room in the space for the washing machine. That left the kitchen wall and the utility room door as a more-or-less continuous easel area. Then the pantry wall over to the linen closet made another. I figured that would be enough. I figured it would be safe for them to use masking tape on the new drywall and not mess up the painting I will do later.

Next I went out to the front porch to make that habitable both for a kitchen on one end and for sleeping quarters for Paul Hendricks at the other. I cleared off the top of the stack of pine ceiling boards so I could stack more boards on top. Then I stacked all the boards that were leaning up against the cabin wall to free up that space. I moved a bunch of other odds and ends that were on the porch and then swept it off real good. Finally, I got a piece of OSB and brought it up for use as a table top in the kitchen on the porch.

I went in and had my dinner and then went around installing light fixtures. I replaced the porcelain fixtures in the ceilings but I only fastened them by the wires instead of screwing the porcelain up to the boxes. That way I won't have to remove them again in order to paint. I'll screw them up to the boxes after I paint, and then ultimately, some day, I will replace them with proper light fixtures.

By the time I finished it was dark outside, but the cabin was really bright with the light bulbs on now that the ceiling has the drywall on. It will be really nice and light for the boys. At 9:30 with the boys an hour and a half overdue, I decided that if I went to bed they would be sure to show up. So that's what I did and that's what they did shortly thereafter. Bill Dunnell drove the bus, He and Paul Hendricks, the scoutmaster, were the only adults on the trip. They had eight scouts with them.

They nosed the bus in the end of the driveway and parked there as they usually do. Then I backed my truck down to the bus and the boys loaded it up with gear. I drove the gear up to the cabin where they unloaded it and I went back down for a second load. It was a little tricky backing down in the dark, but with the help of a lantern I got back down. I left the truck parked up on top after the second trip.

The boys pitched their tents up at the drainfield area and Bill and Paul slept in the bedroom downstairs while I slept in my usual place in the loft.

On Saturday, I backed the truck back down first thing in the morning. Bert and Ernie showed up right away to get their hugs and handouts. Paul and Bill fixed an excellent breakfast, as usual, and afterward, Paul led the boys and got them started on their planning activities. After an hour or two of work, the boys came out to work on service projects that I had lined up for them.

First, I had them move two sizeable logs and a bunch of big firewood rounds out of the way of the upper roadway. I wanted more room up there for the cabinet delivery truck which is due in a few weeks.

After the wood was moved, half of the boys took buckets into the woods and watered all the sequoia trees. The other half went down and took nails out of the boards that had been part of the snowshed. As they got them all out of the boards, I took the boards and stacked them in a neat pile. Keeping the pile neat minimizes the nesting places for rodents and insects.

Around lunch time, Bill's wife, Diana, and younger son showed up. I was up in the loft at the time showing some of the boys the bronze model of Mt. Rainier. Diana came up and joined us. After getting a look at the cabin, Diana, Bill, and a couple other boys, went with me on a tour up to the spring and then on to the sequoia grove. We returned a little late for the boys to get on with their planning. Diana left again after I took a few pictures of her.

The boys took another break later and went back down to take nails and sheet metal off of the logs that had made up the snow shed structure. Once the logs were cleaned up, I stacked them. I'll cut them up for firewood later. They finished up all but one log triangle which I can do later. It is nice having all that work done.

After a great spaghetti dinner, the group had a good time telling stories about the various hilarious adventures they had had at world and national jamborees. Everyone was tired so we went to bed fairly early.

On Sunday morning, Paul and Bill fixed another great breakfast. Bert and Ernie showed up in time to share in it. Afterwards, the boys finished up their planning while I was up in the loft reading. It was very relaxing. When they finished, we had a quick lunch, packed up everything and cleaned the place up. I ferried the gear back down to the bus in two loads reversing the procedure of two days earlier. We left at noon, and then we met up again at Zeke's on the way home where Paul bought each of us a milkshake. It was a great weekend.

At some point during the weekend, I looked at the experiment I had done using bentonite to seal up cracks in a rock basin. I had previously thought it was going to work OK, and I had planned to place bentonite in the last two basins in my drainage channel. What I saw now changed my mind. The bentonite in my experiment had dried out and shrunk so severely that it had cracked and broken up into fragments not more than 3/4" across. These hard, dry fragments covered the bottom of my experimental basin in a jumbled mess and obviously would not seal the cracks if more water were poured in. Moreover, it looked like the clay would swell up again if it got wet and this could possibly cause enough pressure to enlarge the cracks, or otherwise do some damage. It seemed clear to me that I should not use bentonite in the basins. I decided to use brick mortar instead, so that's what I will do.