8/13-15/14 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

I got a late start and then I visited with Priscilla in the rehab center. From there, I proceeded on to Monroe where I had lunch with Uncle Charles. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 3:05. Not much time left in the day to do much work. The temperature outside was 77º and it was 74º inside the cabin. Interestingly, there were no mice in the traps.

I turned on the irrigation valve for Brian, the giant sequoia tree, raised the flag, and took a nap. When I got up, I did some odds and ends and then had my shower and dinner. During the night there were several thunderstorms with a lot of rain.

On Thursday I spent the day fitting ceiling boards around the chimney and replacing the metal chimney flange. I had had some evidence some months earlier that mice had somehow gotten into the cabin up around where the chimney goes through the roof. If they really did get in up there, the ceiling boards should keep them out once they are all installed. By the end of the day, the rafter space around the chimney was completely sealed up except for a one inch strip up against the ridgepole.

Except for that strip, all of the full-width ceiling boards were installed on half of the inside ceiling. What remains to do up there now is to plug up that strip, caulk the seams between the gable walls, ridgepole, and ceiling boards, and to rig up a guy wire to steady the chimney stack. Then the scaffold can be moved.

On Friday morning, I made and installed the strip of wood to plug up the gap against the ridgepole above the chimney. That finally plugged up any possible mouse entry from up there. If I never get another mouse in a trap, I will conclude that they had gotten in that way. If I do get another mouse, then I'll have to come up with a new strategy for finding the hole.

I spent the rest of the morning removing various blemishes, patching holes, and varnishing some raw wood around the kitchen cabinets. That was to make the place a little more presentable for the guests we will have staying up at Camp Serendipity in a couple weeks. I plan to spend next week doing a thorough job of cleaning the place up. I took a picture of the ceiling I had just installed and left for home at 12:30, happy as usual.