6/1-5/20 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 5 days: Monday through Friday.

I arrived at 11:15, brought my gear up to the cabin, and had my usual lunch and a nap. When I got up, I called the building department and had a long conversation with David Spencer about my final inspection. Now that all the railings are done, the only thing left to do is to insulate the floor. But there are a few problems.

First is the question of whether I can insulate the floor and cover up the filler blocking in the joists, which was also one of the final items needing inspection, or whether the building department needs to see the blocking first. I offered to show them pictures of the installed blocking, but David said "No, they need to see it". That means I need an inspection before I insulate so I actually have two more inspections to do.

Second, before I can schedule an inspection, I need to renew my building permit, which is 9 years old.

Third, my permit is so old David said he would have a hard time digging it out of his archives so he could renew it. He asked me to email to him copies of the old permits that I have in order to speed up the process. I told him I would do that on the weekend and then we would proceed from there. I decided not to make any moves to contact an insulation company until the date of the next inspection is nailed down.

When we hung up, I went outside and carried 5 gallons of water up to Andrew.

On Tuesday the temperature outside was 36 degrees when I got up, so I built a fire in the stove to take the chill off the inside. I had heard that the weather was going to be cool all week.

Robert called before breakfast and updated me on his plans. After breakfast, I did some more work on my impossible table. Then Robert called back and told me that he had talked to Ron Sideritz about the emergency vehicle at his place and Ron had told him that he was perfectly fine and that the vehicle had probably parked there temporarily just to get cellphone service.

After lunch and a nap, I took another 5 gallons of water up to Andrew, and then took the wheelbarrow down to the truck. I used it to haul a huge amount of yard waste I had brought with me over to the compost pile. I also dug out a few thistles that I found.

Now that many of the big trees were gone, the wild rose bushes are flourishing, and they all happened to be in bloom, so I took a few pictures of them.

On Wednesday, I spent the morning working on my impossible table. Then after lunch and a nap, I took the wheelbarrow up to the privy and split two huge Doug fir rounds into firewood and hauled the wood down to the cabin in three or four trips and stacked it.

Then I went inside and called Earl. Among other things I told him that Ron was OK but he already knew.

On Thursday I started out by hauling another 5-gallon bucket of water to Andrew. But then I got an idea I should have thought of a long time ago. Instead of drawing a bucket of water from a spigot in the hose down between Dave and Bill, I decided to station a bucket up at Brian and just let the irrigation hose I have constantly running keep the bucket full. The water will overflow the bucket when it is full and spill down to the ground and do the same job as the hose was doing.

That way, I wouldn't have to wait until the bucket filled as I had to before, swatting mosquitoes all the while, and better yet, the bucket was already halfway up the hill to Andrew so I would only have to carry it half as far. I won't get as much exercise that way, but I'll do something else for exercise. After watering Andrew, I set the bucket with the hose in it at Brian.

When I got back, I spent the rest of the morning working on the impossible table. Then I had my lunch and a nap. When I got up, I did some more work on the table and then got a call from Earl. He said that he and Al wanted to come over and visit and see my completed railings.

They showed up a short time later and we had a nice tour to the sequoias, I showed them my piano and even tried to play a piece for them, and I showed Al the model of the cabin and the model of Mt. Rainier Park since he hadn't seen either of them. I took a couple pictures of them before they left.

I walked down to their car with them and Al said he would like to take a few bigleaf maple saplings in the fall. He picked out three that he didn't want me to cut down. There are a bunch of them in amongst my blackberry patch and I will probably lop them off before long. I'll save those three.

When I got back to the cabin, Bill called, and we had a nice long conversation catching up on things.

On Friday morning, I went out to water Andrew and I used the new method for the first time. It worked great. I carried an empty bucket up to Brian, saw that the bucket up there was full and overflowing onto the ground. I removed the hose, poured half of the water into the empty bucket and then carried the two half-buckets up to Andrew and poured them into Andrew's dribble bucket. On the way down, I put the bucket back at Brian, put the hose in it, and took the other empty bucket back down and stored it by the spigot. It was quick and easy. I don't think the mosquitoes even caught on that I was there.

Back at the cabin, I worked on the impossible table some more until Robert drove up. He came into the cabin to look at my railings and then we both went down to the skidder and the jammer. He had brought a bag of new lug nuts for the skidder and he checked to see that they were going to work. Then he swapped out the distributor on the engine on the jammer and took it and the plug wires with him to use on another engine. He also took a big pulley of his that was lying by the concrete staircase. Little by little, he is removing his machinery and equipment from the property. I left for home shortly after he left at 1:00. It was another great week.