October 2013

Last weekend, Jim and I went to the lodge with the plan of working on the sauna casita, the BBQ hut and, if time allowed, cutting down some of the dead cedars for firewood.

On Saturday, Jim ran the 220 wire from the lodge over to the sauna and installed the "box" with the needed panels for the wiring.  Next he installed the door I purchased a few weeks ago at Habitat for Humanity.  It is a solid oak door and should wear well in the snow.  Next time we are up at the cabin, I plan to give it a good coat of spar varnish.  And finally, he dropped the ceiling inside the sauna so that the square footage would meet the recommendations of the sauna tech machine.  We still need to insulate (spray stuff), put in the cedar paneling and slate flooring, add the decking, and install the fixtures. We are still hopeful we can get this done by Christmas.

I went out to lunch with mom, Mary, Pattie and Annie.  We were lucky that Annie was here for her youngest daughter's wedding and was able to stay an additional week to visit with us.  We went out to lunch in Auburn and a pretty nice bar and grill. It was fun to laugh and talk and be together again.

I also ran a trip to Home Depot for supplies for Jim, got the trailer tire replaced and went to the grocery to get us some food - we had brought very little up from home this time.

Sunday, we put the tire on the trailer and pulled it up the hill to return it home. It is our spare trailer that has been stored at the lodge for a year.  We are going to convert it to a flatbed for use with the Polaris we are getting this week.

We also managed to work on the BBQ Hut. This year we decided that it was too hard to get the BBQ into the Snow Shed each year so, I purchased some culls at Home Depot and rustled up some metal roofing to be able to build a storage hut for it.  It will be housed on the lodge deck and will be strong enough to weather the snow during our long winters.

We also started cutting down some of the dead cedars (the ones that are closest to the road by the school for easy hauling up to the firewood stack.  We cut down about 5 trees, some small, some a bit bigger.  All pretty much dead from the beetle blight we are suffering in the sierra.

Don was up at his cabin getting it ready for guests and we spent a very small time with him (he had to get back to Sacramento - so no dinner guest).   I got to see our friendly neighborhood dogs (Brandy and Lucky) and the kids who own them.

Quincy spent most of his time running about the yard, hoping for sticks to be thrown for retrieval.

All in all, it was a pretty productive work weekend. We plan to return the first weekend of November to continue work on the sauna and hut and to split some of the firewood that we cut.