10/16-18/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

I wasn't sure I would be able to make the trip at all this week. I had a meeting in downtown Seattle Wednesday morning and my truck was in the shop with no prediction of how long it was going to take to fix it. As it turned out, soon after I returned home from the meeting, the shop called and told me that my truck was ready. I immediately decided to go up to Camp Serendipity even though it was getting late.

It is a 45 minute walk to the garage to get the truck and by the time I got the truck packed and gassed up, it was already about 3:30. On the way, I stopped in Monroe and had a short visit with Uncle Charles. Then in Goldbar I stopped at Rico's Pizza and ordered a pizza for my dinner. They don't open until the middle of the afternoon so this was one of the few times that I was in Goldbar when they were open. Marilyn and George had told me that their pizza was very good so I had wanted to sample it for a long time. Now I did. It is good.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 6:45 with just enough dusk left for me to park and find my way to the cabin so I could turn the lights on. Inside the cabin I found a mouse in the trap behind the stove. That trap seems to catch most of the mice I catch.

There was a suggestive clue that gave me a new theory of how the mice get in. Right behind the stove, near that trap, there was some unexplained debris on the floor. I had noticed it before and wondered about it but I didn't give it much thought.

Now there was quite a bit more of the same type of debris. I examined it and it looked like what you would get if you let a mouse chew up some OSB. The only OSB around is the roof sheeting and if that's where it came from, it must have fallen straight down from 25 feet straight up where the chimney goes through the OSB in the roof. The question now was, how could a mouse get up there in order to chew up the OSB?

If there was a hole in the roof, or some way for the mice to get through the roof around the chimney, then they might have fallen straight down only to land a foot away from a mousetrap. That would explain why that one trap catches so many mice. The long fall might also explain how that one mouse got mortally injured and yet was not in a trap.

It is difficult and dangerous to rig up so that I can climb up on the roof and look for mouse holes. Since there has been no evidence of leaks in my roof, and since my next project is going to be installing ceiling boards on the inside, I'll wait to check out my new theory. I will have to set scaffolds up inside which will allow me to inspect the roof right around the chimney. That is a good reason to bump up the priority of the ceiling installation job, which I have done.

On Thursday I started out by taking our bedspread and pillow covers out on the porch, hanging them over a line, and beating them to get the dust out. A week or two earlier, I had been lying on the bed when the sunshine was beaming through the bedroom door and shining on the back bedroom wall, and I could see clouds of dust flying up off the bedspread when I disturbed it. That bedspread, although brand new, and Ellen had run it through the washer and dryer, had always had a bad smell to me that reminded me that it was made in China. Somehow I wanted to get that dust out of it hopefully to make it smell better.

The light out on the porch didn't allow me to see whether any dust came off the bedspread when I beat it with a stick, but I knew it must have. After I had given it a good and complete beating, I got the vacuum and attached a beater-brush attachment to the end of the pipe. There wasn't enough suction to keep the beater bar moving, but I fixed that by removing the filter from the vacuum cleaner. That boosted the suction enormously and the beater bar really worked. It didn't matter that the filter was removed because the air the vacuum was blowing out just went outside anyway. I used that beater attachment to thoroughly vacuum the entire bedspread and the two pillow covers.

I replaced the bedding and planned to come back and test the results when the sun reached into the bedroom again that afternoon.

The pressure in the water system was still not 100%. The showerhead was only filling about 90% of the holes. I decided to go down and bleed some air from the hump in the line where the copper line joins the temporary hose section. I got some hissing when I loosened the connection, but I didn't think it was enough to account for the pressure drop.

While I was down there, I decided to follow the hose and make sure that it wasn't pinched off anywhere and to remove any branches that might be across it that would pinch it off when a load of snow piled on top this winter. I removed a lot of such branches but the hose looked open with no obstructions all the way. I was glad I did that because you never know this time of year when we might get our first snow cover.

Next I went up to the spring by way of the sequoia grove just to check on the trees. They all seem to be doing fine and they seem to be ready for winter. At the spring, the water was flowing out the overflow pipe at least as strongly as it was last week. That is a good sign.

The union in the pipe was not fully submerged in the stream so it was a possible source of air in the line. To fix that, I built a small dam just below the union so that the union was fully submerged. That was as much effort as I wanted to devote to the water pressure problem. If it didn't improve any it was still acceptable.

On my way back to the cabin I brought the bucket of sand, rocks, and bentonite that I had excavated from inside the springbox. That was the last vestige of my work up at the springbox in the previous weeks. I now had left no trace.

After lunch, when I woke up from my nap, the sun was shining into the bedroom so it was time for a test of the bedspread. I got into a position where I should have been able to see a cloud of dust in the sunbeam and I pounded on the bed. To my great delight there was virtually no dust cloud. I hope that fixes the odor problem too.

Next I began work on the now-high-priority ceiling project. I started by carrying a sheet of OSB down and storing it under the porch. Then I swept the porch.

Next I counted the 16-foot 1x8s that I have available for the ceiling. I counted 70 of them. Later on I calculated how many I need and determined that I don't have enough. I'll have to get some more ordered and delivered before the snow falls.

Next I pushed all the short rebar hangers through the stanchions so that they stuck out the other side. They had been pushed the other way just to make them less dangerous when the scouts were there, but now I needed them sticking out to form the racks on which I will place the newly varnished boards to dry.

Now that the rack was ready and the porch was clean, I opened a can of varnish and started varnishing boards and stacking them on the rack. By the end of the day, the rack was full with 21 boards drying. I am debating how many coats of varnish to put on the boards and whether or not to sand the boards between any of the coats. I'm not sure how I will make those decisions.

That evening, when all was quiet, I was startled to hear a fairly loud snap. I was sure it was a mouse trap springing, but when I checked the traps, I found that they were all still set. I couldn't explain the noise and figured that some stressed member in the cabin had finally let go. I imagined it might have been drywall cracking or a check opening up in a log. And unless I actually saw such a crack, I probably would never find out what made the noise.

On Friday morning I vacuumed the entire first floor. Before I did I scooped up some of that debris that I think came from OSB just so that I could refer to it later in an attempt to solve the mouse-entry mystery. I am expecting Bob and Pat Burton to visit next week so I want the place to be reasonably cleaned up.

While I was vacuuming in the corner of the living room, I saw that a short sample of the metal corner material for the drywall that had been standing up in the corner was now lying flat on the floor. I stood the piece on end and let it fall to the floor. It made a sound exactly like that snap I had heard the night before. I was convinced that that was the source of the sound because I was sure that the metal piece had been standing upright in the corner and now it was down.

But what could have pushed it over? I could think of only three possibilities. There might be a smart mouse or lizard on the loose inside that is smart enough to stay out of my traps. Or there might have been a gust of air, but from where I couldn't imagine. Or the piece of metal might have been so finely balanced that just the thermal expansion or contraction from temperature changes was enough to tip it over. Maybe someday I'll figure it out.

Since I had a little time left, I put together the Pendaflex hangers I had bought for the filing cabinet and installed them in the drawers. Then I hung some of the Pendaflex folders on the hangers and discovered that I had different sizes of folders. I was delighted to find that in addition to the folders that are designed to hold only a few papers, I had some that had wider bottoms that could accept an inch, or even an inch and a half wide sheaf of papers. These were perfect for holding the four volumes of this Construction Journal which I keep up at the cabin. Each volume is about an inch thick and they fit perfectly in those folders.

I did some more filing of papers that I have lying around and which need to be properly filed but I left that job undone because it was time to go home. I left at 1:00 happy to be embarked on the ceiling project which should keep me occupied for a good part of the winter.