7/29-8/1/20 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 4 days: Wednesday through Saturday.

I arrived at 11:50, brought my gear up to the cabin, hoisted the flag, and found a message from John. He had left it on Monday, but I had skipped coming to the cabin Monday and Tuesday because Ellen and I hiked the Naches Peak loop on Tuesday. I called John right away and we had a long, and long-overdue, conversation. I was happy to hear that he is doing so well and having so much fun.

When we hung up, I had a late lunch followed by a nap. When I got up, I went out and irrigated Andrew. In the process, I made a change which I should have made earlier. My routine was to have a 5-gallon bucket full of water from Brian's irrigation hose. I would dump half of the water from there into an empty bucket that was standing by, and then I would carry the two buckets up to Andrew. That empty bucket was bigger than 5 gallons. It holds about 6.4 gallons. It dawned on me that if I used the bigger bucket to collect water from Brian's hose, I would be able to bring 6.4 gallons of water up to Andrew. After watering Andrew, I put the bigger bucket in place to collect water so that I can begin the new procedure.

On Thursday morning, Dave called, and we had a fairly long delightful conversation. When I went out to work, I decided to use the only snatch block I have in the rigging to lift rocks and place them in the landing. But the snatch block was in use in my exercise rigging. So, I got a big double block and swapped it out for the snatch block. But to get the rope to pass through the double block, I had to cut off a big knot in the end of the rope and whip the end of the rope.

This all took a little time, but pretty soon had I set up the rigging I needed. I used the long S-hook that was holding up Dave's bird feeder to hang the snatch block from the outer Grid F3 anchor hook. The crane cable ran down from there.

I tried the rigging out and it worked great. I was surprised at how effective three short rebar S-hooks are acting as grapples hanging from a shackle at the end of the crane cable.

I worked on the landing until the sun reached it and then it got too hot to work. I switched my attention to the water heater restraint which was in the much cooler crawl space. I finished fabricating and installing the top band and the top two struts. I also made the bottom band and one of the lower struts. Then I stopped for lunch and a nap.

When I got up, the temperature outside was 96 degrees. I went into the woods and irrigated Andrew with 6.4 gallons of water. Then I went down and picked blackberries. I only got about half of a yogurt container. I think I missed the peak of the berries.

I went back to work in the crawl space and finished installing the complete water heater restraint. I took a picture of it.

On Friday, I got up at 4 AM to beat the heat. I got a good start on the landing. I framed the area in with 3 1x2s screwed together and dug into the ground so the tops were at the grade I wanted for the landing. It has a slight compound slope which I think will work well, and it forms a tapering step up against the Grid F3 column which the building inspector suggested so I'm sure that will be OK. The step isn't big enough to cause a problem driving a vehicle over the landing.

I took a picture of the progress I had made before the sun came out and stopped me. I went back to the berry patch and picked a few more berries. Then I went into the woods and gave Andrew 6.4 gallons of water. And then I had my lunch and a nap.

I was awakened from my nap at about 2:00 by a knock on the door. It was Robert who had an hour to kill so he came over for a visit. After a nice visit, he looked at the finished water heater restraint and I thanked him for the suggestions that he had given me and that worked so well.

On Saturday morning, I loosely placed all the big rocks that were lying around near the landing. I wanted to get an idea of how many more rocks I was going to need. I was happy to see that I would only need a few more and they would be small ones.

When the sun came out, I irrigated Andrew with 6.4 gallons and then harvested all the rhubarb. It didn't do too well this year, but I could tell that it was done growing and was only going to deteriorate from now on. I got a handful of medium to small stalks which is better than nothing.

I left for home at 10 AM happy with the progress for the week.