7/26-28/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:08 and as soon as I got out of the truck I could see a bunch of newly ripe blackberries. I walked back to look at the rhubarb and was disappointed to see that it hasn't changed much at all for a few weeks. I don't know what is going on with it. It started out so fast and healthy.

After taking my gear to the cabin, I had my lunch and a nap. When I got up, I opened the valve to water Brian and Paul. Then I went into the woods to check some of the rest of the giant sequoia trees. They are all doing fine except I wish that they grew faster.

When I came back out of the woods, I dragged another tread blank down from the woodshed and set it up on sawhorses. Then I went down and started picking blackberries. There were more than I had thought at first.

While I was picking, Bill called. I walked back up to the cabin while I was talking with him so that I could look at a calendar. He is planning to give me a ride to and from the clinic for my next cataract surgery on August 11 and he needed to schedule some other things to fit around it. We had a nice conversation. I went back and picked more berries after we hung up. I filled a fairly big container.

On Wednesday morning Dave called. We had a great conversation on a range of topics.

After having my breakfast, I went to work and planed, scraped, chamfered, and fashioned the nose on the tread blank. Then I used my new impact wrench to remove the screws and dismantle one more temporary plank tread. That tool made the job much faster and easier.

Next I mounted, aligned, and scribed the new tread. Then I took the tread back down to the sawhorses, cut the kerfs in it and the stringers, and then cut all the notches before I quit for lunch.

After lunch, while there was still some shade, I worked the notches down and got the tread to fit perfectly. Then I drilled the lag screw holes and sprayed the parts with Board Defense. By that time the temperature outside was 91° and I went inside for a nice nap. I did no more work outside after that.

On Thursday morning, I stained and bolted down the new tread. After cleaning out my brush, I took the chainsaw up on the high rock and bucked up most of the remaining log from the tree that had crashed through the cabin roof. I stopped when the chainsaw ran out of gas.

That section of the log was split down the middle for its entire length. So as I bucked it, the rounds came off in halves. That made them light enough so that I could pick them up and carry them.

I used the same technique I had used before and carried the wood along the ridge toward the east and then threw them down on the slope above the roadway. When all the wood had been moved that way, I went down on the slope and threw the wood all the way down onto the roadway.

After bringing the chainsaw back to the crawlspace I took the wheelbarrow out and used it to haul all the wood up and stack it under the eaves in front of the cabin. Before I did, though, I took the wheelbarrow down to the truck and used the small compressor down there to pump up the tire on the wheelbarrow which had gone flat.

The temperature outside was 86° so by the time I put the wheelbarrow back, I was sweating like a pig. I took a nice cool shower before I had my lunch and packed up to leave. I left for home at 12:50 happy to have gotten another tread installed and most of the firewood harvested from the high rock.

That evening, Ellen showed me some research she had done on rhubarb and I learned that I had done a few things wrong. In particular, I had not watered it nearly enough. I'll try to fix that next week.