9/17-19/14 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

On the way I stopped in Monroe and played a game of checkers with Uncle Charles. I arrived at Camp Serendipity about noon and found Robert and Dee hard at work. Tim was still out sick. I was happy again to find no mice in the traps.

The loggers left at about 2:00. I had some lunch and a short nap. I had just gotten up and was just getting started on the bathroom cabinet project when Robert knocked on the door. He explained that he thought he might have blocked my pickup in and he tried to call to ask me. There was no answer so he drove all the way back to see if I was OK. It was then I discovered that my phone didn't work.

When Robert left, I drove to the schoolbus turnaround in order to get cell phone service and I called the phone company to report the problem. I asked them to check my line, which they did, and they found that it didn't work. They scheduled a service man to come out on Friday. I tried to get them to make it earlier but they couldn't.

Then I sent a text message to Ellen telling her about the phone and that I would go back to the schoolbus turnaround at 8:00 in the evening and give her a call. I said that I would wait at the turnaround for a while in case she wanted to call me back. She texted back that 8:00 would be OK.

After I returned to the cabin, I discovered that the phone worked again. I called the phone company to cancel the service call, but they advised that I leave it open along with Friday's appointment just in case the problem wasn't completely fixed. That's what I did.

On Thursday right after breakfast I went down and sprayed the lower roadway with water to keep the dust down when the loggers got there. They arrived about 9:00 and started right out stripping the limbs from a big Doug Fir above the upper roadway. That tree had a huge infection of mistletoe which made huge branches grow from the tree with the long mistletoe strands.

Robert climbed and limbed the tree while I took video shots of the work. Dee piled up the branches.

The phone company repairman called me to tell me that they had accidently cut my phone line and he was calling to check that my phone was working again. I thanked him for checking.

When Robert came back down off the tree, the three of us piled up the limbs down the hill so that he could reach them with his loader. He loaded up and hauled away a couple dump trucks full of brush before they left at about 2:00.

After they left, I continued piling up brush and in the process I used my chainsaw to buck up the big branches and wheelbarrow the wood up to my firewood stack in front of the cabin. I was pretty well exhausted by the end of the day. The phone continued to work fine so I didn't have to leave the cabin in order to call Ellen.

On Friday morning, the loggers arrived just after I finished my breakfast. Robert started right in falling the big fir that he had stripped the day before. I took more video shots of the work, including some from the driveway entrance so I could capture the view of the tree falling straight toward me. It was pretty spectacular.

Once the tree was on the ground, Robert and Dee made short work of the mess. They cut off the remaining limbs, bucked the logs, moved the pieces into the appropriate decks and piles, and cleaned up the brush. It looked like a park again when they left shortly after noon. I took video shots of the work. I left shortly after that very happy about the logging progress. On the way home, I stopped at Priscilla's and figured out why her washing machine overflowed: there was a garment at the bottom of the sink plugging it up.