A week at the Cabin 08-18 to 08-23 two

This is part two of “A week at the Cabin”.

Thursday 08-21

Got up at normal time (7:00) , fixed breakfast, ate breakfast. Enjoyed the morning sitting on the front porch with a cup of hot cocoa and a book in my hand.

Bob climbed out of his van around 9:00 and came over to sit on the porch while his coffee cooked. We sat for a while getting our caffeine charge. Eventually we put the tools in the jeep and drove up to the crossing. We parked the jeep at the crossing and climbed the steep hill alongside the gully.

We dug a little in the seep that I found a couple days ago. There is a little water here but not much.

We may tap this one at some other time.

We dug in another spot on the side of the creek and found some water but not much.
We climbed further up the hill until we came to a big fern area. 
Bob did some digging

and came up with a good seep with about as much flow as the cabin spring, maybe a little more.

So as it turned out, there are at least three possible springs that are “easy” to get at. The highest one up the hill is the one we are going to tap at this time. The other two we may tap at some later date.

Friday 08-22
Since there wasn’t any water going into it anyway; we disconnected the two lines going into the camp spring tank, brought the tank down to the cabin and put it into the back of the jeep to take up the road for the new spring. Also there was 500 feet of irrigation pipe and some tools in the jeep.
We assembled the parts we would need to tap the spring.

Here is Bob measuring and cutting the hardware cloth for a screen over the tap.

Here is the screen and the tap.

  
We loaded everything in the jeep and set off up the hill.

Once we got to the crossing, Bob rolled out the 500 feet of irrigation pipe

and pulled it 645 feet up a steep, steep climb to the ferns where the spring was hidden. It was all I could do to get up there carrying only a shovel and a couple of plastic parts in a plastic bucket.
This makes three days out of the last four that I have climbed this hill. I hope this is the last time for a while.

Bob prepared the spring and installed the tap.

He covered the tap with rocks then covered the rocks with plastic to keep surface water out of the tap, then covered the whole thing with dirt and local debris

to keep the critters out of the spring. It looks like about the same amount of water coming from this spring as there is coming from the cabin spring. That is plenty of water for our needs.

Joanne and Dave told Bob that they were coming up to night.
They arrived around 8:00 and we visited until around 10:00 when we all went of to our cots.

Saturday 08-23

I got up around 7:00 had breakfast and wrote in the blog some.
Around the third cup of cocoa people started stumbling into the cabin.
A little after 8:30, Joanne and Dave came in. Bob was the last to arrive around 9:30 and was bent almost double by his aching back. After enough time and several cups of coffee,
he got “straightened out”.

Around 11:00 Bob, Dave and I got in the jeep, to go up to the gate where they were going to drop down on the spring to place a stake at the spring so we can find it after a few years when it is all grown in.

On the way to the gate we came across Connie and Bruce, Joanne’s sister and brother-in-law, coming down the road. After a bit of greetings, they continued down the road and we went to the gate.
After dropping Bob and Dave off at the gate I returned to the cabin.
Connie and Bruce had their 9 year old grandson Trenton with them.
We visited for a bit and then Bruce, Trenton, and I got into the jeep and drove up the Bear Spring Rd to the crossing at Nutmeg Creek where we stopped to wait for Bob and Dave to come down the hill.
In a few minutes we could see them working their way down to us. After a bit we set the new tank in place on a flat just above the road.

 

Now I just have to buy another 1300 feet if plastic pipe and a few fittings and we will have a more dependable water source.

The rest of the day we just visited and checked out Connie’s jeep.
It is a 2005 Rubicon with lots of bells and whistles.
It is nice looking and is a dark silver color.
Later in the afternoon I took Bob back up the road so he could follow the pipe down the hill from another spring to check the pipe. When he got back he had a short piece of plastic pipe that had been chewed almost all the way through by rodents.

This will probably be an on going problem with pipe laying on the surface but there is no way it will all get buried.

Bob made some noodles for dinner.

He made the dough the night before. He rolled it out on the metal counter top.

After rolling the dough Bob folded it and cut it into strips.

And turned the dough into Pasta.

He fixed it with chicken and some vegetables.

A very good dinner.

Sunday 08-24

Got up just after 7:00 had breakfast and just hung out until around 1:00 when Bob left to go Kayak the Noyo River. After Bob left I started packing to go home and cleaning the cabin. I left around 3:30. Joanne and Dave left shortly after.

While I was at the cabin on Friday, Patti went to one of Harvey’s games it was only a scrimmage but Patti is something of a fan and will go to any game Harvey is in.

If you haven’t heard we had a serious earthquake in our area.
The city of Napa was hit pretty hard with several buildings destroyed.

Here is the extent of damage at our house.
The cupboard doors came open.

It was a great week at the cabin and I can’t wait until I can go back.