9/24-25/26 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

On the way I visited with Priscilla in the Anderson House. Then I proceeded on to Monroe where I played a game of checkers with Uncle Charles. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at about 1:00 and found Robert and Tim at work and about to finish up.

When I got out of my truck and started talking with Robert, Ernie showed up. This was the first time I had seen him since Bert died and I had been wondering how he was doing. He looks really old but he eagerly ate the dog biscuits I gave him.

Robert showed me the progress he had made. He had two log decks ready for loading on log trucks. He still hadn't found a self loader so he wasn't sure exactly how he was going to load the logs. He also showed me a bunch of firewood rounds they had bucked up for me up on the east arm of the high rock ridge. They left at about 2:00.

When I went into the cabin, I found one mouse in the trap behind the wood stove. That provided no clue about how it got in. The rodent war continues.

After lunch and a short nap, I went out and rolled down most of the firewood rounds they had left me and stacked them in front of the cabin. It was raining enough for me to get wet. I started a fire in the wood stove when I went in so that I could warm up and dry my clothes.

On Thursday, Robert and Tim showed up at about 8:30. I went out and helped stack brush in order to clear off the upper roadway. Once, while Robert was hauling out a dump truck load of brush, Tim came came up to the loft and I showed him my bronze model of Mt. Rainier. /

Robert had cut a big round out of the mistletoe infected tree that had a big branch stump coming out of the side of the round. He thought it would make an interesting conversation piece if I put it on display somewhere. I decided the only place for it was on the edge of the upper roadway more or less under the corner of the cabin roof. I used the porch crane to drag it up the upper roadway to near where I wanted it to go. Tim helped me muscle it over into position. I want to move it another 6 or 8 inches, but that will wait until later.

The loggers left about 1:30 and I went back to work moving firewood rounds and throwing the scrap wood and branches onto a future burn pile up on the rock. I was super tired when I went in for lunch and a short nap.

When I got up, I did a little more work assembling the bathroom cabinet over the toilet. Then Bill called and we had a delightful conversation for about an hour catching each other up on what has been happening.

On Friday morning, Robert and Dee showed up about 8:30. It was raining off and on but they worked in it anyway while I took some videos. They cut down all the trees from the east arm of the high rock ridge and made a lot of progress cleaning up the brush from them. The next big challenge is to cut down some really big fir trees growing in the valley behind the rock ridge and having them fall over the rock, which is about 10 feet high where they will go over. Robert did quite a bit of thinking and strategizing about how to get that done.

At about 11:00, Robert hurt his back badly enough that he had to stop work. He lay down on the porch for a while trying to ease the pain, but eventually hobbled down to his truck and left with Dee at 11:30 to find a chiropractor. I hope he gets it fixed right away. He plans to come back on Monday and wants me there then too.

I took some pictures before I left for home at about 12:30.