9/6-8/19 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Friday through Sunday.

On the way I stopped and visited with Earl and Patty who happened to be there. She said she would like to visit Camp Serendipity, so I told them to come over tomorrow. They said they would.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 11:30, brought my gear up to the cabin, and hoisted the flag. When I looked in the crawl space, I saw that I had caught two mice, one in each trap. I disposed of the bodies and then went in and had my lunch. Then, before I took my nap, I went into the woods to make sure the pump was still running. I was happy to discover that it was.

When I got up from my nap, I spent the rest of the day vacuuming the place upstairs and down and sweeping off the front porch. I wanted the place presentable for a visit the next day.

On Saturday morning the temperature outside was 50°. I had left the windows open and a fan running overnight, so the cabin was nice and cool inside.

Out on the porch, I laid out the newel post sites on the tread blank and after some deliberation, I decided that I wanted to use 3" tenons for fastening them to the tread. I checked my hole saws and found that I don't have a 3" saw. I have a 2 1/2" saw, but I decided that was too small. I put a 3" saw on my shopping list.

Then I looked through my tools for a scraper that wasn't worn down completely. I found two of them, each with four cutters on it, and I sharpened one of them up so it was razor sharp. Then I used that scraper to scrape the smaller of the two newel posts that I had lying on the sawhorses along with the tread blank.

Just as I finished, Robert called to check in. He was working on the south side of the lake and we caught each other up on recent developments. Shortly after we hung up, Earl and Patty drove up.

They visited for about an hour and we had a good time. I showed them the cabin model and the bronze Mt. Rainier model. They also looked at a few pictures in the photo album. I walked them back down to their car when they left.

After having my lunch and a nap, I went back out on the porch and scraped about half of the bigger newel post before I quit for the day.

On Sunday morning, I went back into the woods just to make sure the pump was still running. To my great delight it still was. I think that from now on, I'll just check it once a week and I expect that it will run constantly from now on.

I finished scraping the bigger newel post, and then, because I am done making chip messes for a while, I cleaned up all the chips and swept the porch. Then I went inside and began some serious thinking about how to design and build the guard rails and handrail for the loft staircase. The tricky part is accommodating the loft floor and the Grid B.5,2.5 loft support column, both of which are right up against the stair treads. I made some drawings, but I'll have to think about it a lot more.

I left for home at 12:30 feeling very good about the week and the new schedule.