12-23-13

As you may remember I was planning to take Harvey up to the cabin on Saturday.
I was to pick him up at 9:00.
Around 8:15 I got a call from his mom. Harvey was sick and would not be able to go this time.
Bummer!!

I decided to to take the jeep and go on up by myself.

I got to the cabin around 10:30 and unloaded the jeep.

The temperature was in hi forty’s so a fire was called for, therefore the next thing I had to do was clean out the wood stove and start a fire.
It only took a short time to get that done and the cabin was warming up nicely.

My fire wood supply is very low so a thought I would split some large chunks of redwood that I had stacked behind the dining hall.

I walked around to the back of the cabin where I have some tools to get the splitting mall.
As I came around the corner of the cabin I saw this mess.

Oh, oh: it looks like we have had a visitor while we were gone.

I am not absolutely sure what kind of critter did this but after checking things out I decided that it had to be a bear; probably a young one.

It pulled the bag of Rat poison out of the back of the upper shelf of the cabinet you see on the left. The critter ate the entire contents of the bag plus two blocks of the poison that I had set out for the rats and mice. 
The beast chewed up all the fuel containers that I had stored in the back. It must have really liked the 4 gallons of kerosene because he chewed it up a lot.
He also chewed up a 6 gallon gasoline jug which had around 3 gallons of gas in it. It chewed through some aerosol paint cans,

a can of Try Flow spray lubricant and a can of PVC glue.

 

Some where I think there is a very sick bear. I wouldn’t be surprised if the bag of Rat poison killed him, not to mention all the other chemicals it ingested.

I got the mess picked up

Then I got the splitting mall and tried splitting a couple small logs. After the second one I decided that I wasn’t quite ready to split wood yet so I put the mall away.

I moved some wood into the cabin. Then I ran some water in the sink. I noticed that the water pressure was low and getting lower as I ran the tap. I filled a coffee pot with water and turned the tap off.

I climbed the hill to the cabin spring and found that the tank was empty. I unplugged the input pipe and found that water was coming out of the spring at the normal rate.

This picture is a little blurry but you can see the trickle of water coming from the pipe.

 

After checking the cabin spring I walked across the hill to the camp spring and found that tank was also empty.

I walked down the hill and found that the pipe that carries water to the main camp had come apart at a joint.

 

I plugged the pipes back together.

 

I walked over to where I have some valves on the system and found that the line that goes to the cabin had also popped off. I plugged the pipe back in.

The pipe coming from the top of the picture is from the camp spring.
The pipe on the right comes from the cabin spring. The pipe going down the hill is to the cabin.
That is the one that was disconnected.

 

I suspect that freezing water is what caused the pipes to separate. I will have to get some more clamp’s for the system and put them on the lines the next time I go up.
I am planning to go back up the day after Christmas.

Even though there were some issues to take care of, I had a good time at the cabin.
I left around 12:30 on Sunday.