Several months ago, my mom sold her house and decided to move into a really nice rental where she doesn’t have to worry about the yard, shoveling snow, or maintenance.  The other bonus was that she had a few extra dollars left over, so I suggested she go and do something she’s always wanted to do.  I suggested she take a cruise, partly because we had just taken ours over Christmas and had a terrific time, and partly because if she was travelling alone or with a friend, most everything is taken care of for you.  The conversation went on and the next thing you know, her cruise is now our cruise.  Sandi and I hadn’t planned on taking another one quite so soon, but I think it’s going to be a good time.  My sister and niece are also going, and it just so happens to be the very same ship we were on just seven months ago.  It’s now sailing the Alaska route out of Seattle, so the familiarity should be nice.  Plus, we’ll be on the boat for mom’s birthday, so we can all celebrate together.

When we were living in Chehalis, the logistics of sailing out of Seattle sounded a lot less daunting.  After we made all the initial reservations and arrangements, we found our Colorado property and things changed a tiny bit.  Mandi and Casey will be up for a visit tomorrow morning and then I plan to catch a ride down to the airport with them in the afternoon for my flight to SeaTac.  We’ll be on the cruise for a week and then we’ll be finishing up the packing and moving.  If all goes according to plan, we should be pulling in to Cripple Creek with everything we own in just about two weeks from now.

Given the remoteness of this property, I’m a little nervous about leaving our fifth-wheel, our vehicles, my tools, etc., so I’ve been working hard to get a small measure of security in place.  I talked before about building the fence and gate, and I’m pleased to report that after four days of fighting rocks and dodging lightning, I have a finished project and a little more progress to share.

The ‘before and after’ photos were taken about four months apart, and give me a real sense of accomplishment.  I’m hoping it will also give me a little peace of mind while we’re away.

 

An alternate title might be “An Unplanned Day Off”.  Since I fly back to Seattle on Friday, there are a couple of things that really need to be taken care of first.  As I mentioned in my last post, the most important job at this point is the construction of a gate down at the bottom of the driveway.  To that end, I got up nice and early yesterday, loaded my tools and the fence posts into the truck and by 8:30, I was hard at work.  My hope was to get the holes dug, get the posts in, and call it a day before the afternoon rains and lightning started.  It really helped that the storm held off until after 5:00, but the ground is so rocky here that digging took far longer than I expected.

I tried to get a rock out of the last hole, but eventually just decided to leave it there and dig beside it.  I finished the last post as it began to rain and headed back to the trailer for a shower and some dinner.  I missed lunch, but I had worked straight through the entire day and was quite proud of my accomplishment.  My Fitbit even sent me an email telling me what a great job I had done; over 20,000 steps, 9 out of 9 hours of activity, and the equivalent of over ten miles walked.

When I went to bed last night, my plan had been to get a good nights’ sleep and then finish up today.  I still need to cut all of the posts to an even height, attach the two, 8 foot gates to the main posts, and then put up the twenty four, 12 foot rails.  But, when I woke up, everything hurt and I just felt exhausted.  This wasn’t just a little tired, or a ‘gee, I wish I could have slept for an extra 20 minutes’ feeling.  The physical activity and sunburn just knocked me out.  So, I decided I’d “take the day off”, regain a little energy, and get back to it tomorrow.

Did I mention my propane tanks went empty last night?  That means I didn’t have any heat all night and when I got up, there was no hot water.  Oh…..  and I apparently failed to completely latch the freezer last night, so everything inside was pretty well thawed out.  Our draw check took three days to clear the bank, so since the funds weren’t available last week, I missed the Friday payment deadlines on two credit cards we’ve been using to buy supplies.  And here I thought Mondays weren’t supposed to rear their ugly heads at us retired folks anymore.  I sat and paid bills and then, since I couldn’t cook anything, I headed to town for breakfast, then stopped off at the Ace to fill the propane tanks.  I came back up to the house and hauled out the generator so I could plug in the well pump.  I have almost 300 feet of hose running up the bluff to the trailer so I can fill the fresh water tank.  That process only took fifteen minutes or so to complete and then, just as I finished, the plumber showed up to install the hot water heater.  I got him started and then headed to Victor, another small mining town about 7 miles from here to do my laundry.

There is another, larger laundromat in Woodland Park, but it’s about 45 minutes away, it’s not very clean, it’s full of sketchy laundry-doers, and many of the machines are out of order.  The dryers that do work have odd stains inside and some even have mysterious stuff stuck to the inside of the drums.  The facility in Victor is certainly smaller, but it’s clean, the people (when there are any) are friendly, and the equipment all seems pretty new.  If you’ve ever had to wash your clothes in a public laundromat, you might understand when I say that the clothes just somehow seem to come out cleaner at the Victor laundromat.  I guess it will work until we get our own machines installed.

Hey, we technically have water, there’s a water heater in the house, and the electricity should be working tomorrow.  We just need to get everything tied together and connected, so we’re certainly getting closer.  A visit from Digger Guy with a new septic tank would be great so the water has someplace to go, but so far…  I haven’t seen him.

The bills are paid, I have clean clothes, the propane tanks are full and back where they belong, the fresh water tank is full and the water heater in the trailer contains somewhere around 6 gallons of piping hot water.  I feel refreshed after taking the day off.  The Motrin probably didn’t hurt, either.

Several of my posts have dealt with the challenges we’ve encountered trying to get the water turned on, getting Digger Guy out to replace the septic system, or getting power to the house.  As frustrating as these have been, I’ve tried to treat this as my job; trying to get the house into a livable state so our time in the fifth wheel is kept to a minimum. That means spending at least part of nearly every day down there working on one project or another.  I’ve had to take time out now and then to go into town to wash clothes, pick up lumber and supplies, go to the bank, and eat a real meal occasionally, but there are definitely some changes taking place.

Along those lines, several people have asked to see progress photos, and I guess that makes sense, but so much of my time has been spent tearing out drywall, mouse-infested insulation, trim, and a little bit of framing, and making trip after trip down to the dump to haul away all of the debris, that it doesn’t feel like I have a lot of changes to show for my efforts.  The office, for example, is now stripped down to bare studs and ceiling joists.  It’s de-moused, and after four cans of expandable foam, I think most of the pathways in have been sealed off.  With a little luck, the mouse hotel is now closed.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the kitchen, too.  I hadn’t planned to work in there today.  I had planned to work on the gate and fence at the bottom of the driveway.  We need to be able to lock the gate and restrict traffic up the hill, especially while we’re gone.  I don’t want anymore random visitors, dumping or thefts.  I put the two main gate posts in the other day and the concrete is set now, so I decided I’d devote today to digging the other six holes and setting the rest of the posts.  Unfortunately, it started raining again as I was finishing the first of the remaining post holes.  This may not seem terribly important.  After all, I’ve spent 30 or so years in Washington where rain is rarely a reason to stop working or change plans.  But, here’s the thing:  the ground here has a lot of rocks in it and the rain here brings lots of lightning.  How do these two things relate to one another, you ask?  That’s the very question I was pondering as I leaned on my 5′ iron breaker bar trying to catch my breath and decide how to spend the rest of my day.  It was then that I realized that hanging on to a big, heavy lightning rod might not be a great idea.  So, I worked on the kitchen today.

The kitchen had an L-shaped counter with lower cabinets, a small, oddly shaped pantry, and an 8’x 4′ island with a range and small prep sink.

Once I got the island out, we were left with the plumbing and range down-draft motor in the middle of the kitchen.

I had to cut out a portion of the floor to access the copper pipes, wiring, and pvc pipes that served as both drain and vent.

The copper pipes are now capped off, and the pvc has been tied together to eliminate the upright pipes.  The pantry to the right of the photo has been re-framed to enlarge it a bit, and a new piece of plywood in the floor and the kitchen is now a nice, clean new slate.  We’ll have the new window, appliances, and cabinets in a couple of weeks, so we’ll be able to start putting everything back together and give us a working kitchen real soon.

So, there it is…..  some progress.

It’s not really a question.  It’s more of an introspective, really.  Anybody that knows me will tell you that a few days’ growth of whiskers or a few stray hairs tickling my ears will make me feel scruffy and send me searching for a razor.  My dad had two hairstyles.  He wore a flat top through high school and kept it for the majority of his Navy career before he let it grow a bit and combed it straight back.  Despite being a child of the seventies and spending much of that decade in Southern California, dad insisted that I keep my hair cut short, as well.  I got teased a bit, but that first hair cut in Basic Training was a whole lot less traumatic for me than it was for many of my fellow trainees.  Regular haircuts were the norm for the years I spent in the Army and then afterwards, during my career as a police officer.  To tell the truth, I found that grabbing a handful of hair was a much more effective way to control a combative suspect that trying to use one of those ‘wrist control techniques’, and I never wanted anyone grabbing my hair in a fight, so I continued to keep it cut short.

The point that I’m trying to make, is that since I retired and we embarked on this new adventure, I don’t really have any reasons to maintain some of those former habits and practices anymore, and it feels a little disorienting.  I no longer have a parent or boss dictating my grooming standards, and I don’t really have a schedule that has to be kept.  This area of Colorado seems to be quite an eclectic mix of styles and personalities, so societal standards are pretty much wide open, too.  A quick trip to the grocery store in our little town is likely to find 60 year-olds wearing dreadlocks, and 70 year-olds wearing dirty, tie-dyed shirts.  Though I have to wonder…  have they been wearing the same clothes since the sixties, or did they resurrect their old style once they retired and marijuana became legal?  After so many years of being told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, where to be, what to wear, etc., I now have the freedom to make whatever decisions I want…..  I just don’t have the experience or the courage to branch out much.  I don’t really need a beard to prove to the world that I have a Y-chromosome, like so many of those goofy looking hipsters these days, so the answer is, this scruff needs to go.  Given the large, hairless patch on the top of my head, I can’t see dreadlocks or a ponytail in my near future, either.  Changes may come as I struggle with these decisions, but it likely won’t be in the grooming department just yet.

Enough of that…..  I doubt that anyone cares.  It’s only Wednesday and a lot has happened this week.  We got an offer on our house in Chehalis, which was exciting, but it was quite a bit lower than we were willing to accept.  We countered, but they immediately rejected it, so I don’t think they were very serious in the first place.  We have other showings scheduled and interest has been good, so hopefully another offer will come in soon.  A crew showed up here on Monday and finally installed the new power pole near the barn so that power could be run down to the house.  It’s been connected, inspected, and energized.  I now have a temporary power outlet to use until they get the panel inside hooked up next Tuesday.  By this time, next week, I should be able to turn the lights on inside.  The hot water heater should be installed on Friday and the new furnace and ducts should be in by next Wednesday.  I picked up our first draw check from the bank yesterday, so we can pay off the credit cards we’ve been using to purchase building materials and appliances, so that’s pretty big.  The best news might be that I found a place to order the last window that I need.  It’s a 72″ x 36″ picture window with grids that I hadn’t been able to find anywhere in stock or available on-line.  It turns out that the hardware store in Woodland Park can get it within two weeks at a very reasonable price.  While I was there, I loaded the truck with plywood and sheet rock (I paid for it all…  I didn’t just “load up”) and then rushed to get back up here before the afternoon storm came in.  I just made it, but didn’t have time to unload it all, so I parked the truck in the barn so the sheet rock wouldn’t get destroyed by the rain.  Since I’m the only one up here, I’m guessing it’s still there and still needs to be unloaded.  I should probably get to work.

 

This past week has gone by very quickly.  Casey, Robert and the grand kids came back up with their trailer to spend a few days camping with us and then Joe & Meghan came up with their kids for a day.  We had a chance to shoot guns, eat a lot of food, enjoy a few great campfires and even managed to get a little bit of work done.

Robert tore down all of the ship-lap pine in the living room that we didn’t want to keep and in the office ceiling, I discovered the biggest mouse nest imaginable.  Let’s just say it wasn’t water damage on the ceiling.  That’s the good news…  I didn’t have a water leak as I initially feared.  The bad news, of course, is it wasn’t a water leak.  I think I would have preferred that to the dozens of mummified mouse bodies, the cache of grass seed, dried corn and dog food, and of course, the other ‘stuff’ you find with any rodent nest.  From just one rafter bay, I filled two, heavy-duty, 50 gallon garbage bags with the shredded insulation and all of that smelly, dusty debris.  After cleaning it up and spraying everything down with bleach-water, the odors seem to be going away.

Sadly, Sandi’s short visit came to an end yesterday.  I took her down to the Colorado Springs airport for her trip back to Seattle and I headed back up here to our mountain.  I miss her already, but we had a chance to firm up some of our plans for the house, we got doors and windows ordered, and it will only be a couple of weeks before I fly up for our Alaska cruise.  The week after we get back, we’ll be packing, loading the U-Haul, cleaning, and then driving down together for the big move.

I need to get a bunch of things done in the next two weeks; framing the pantry, framing the downstairs bathroom, ripping out the rest of the office ceiling, and installing posts and a gate down at the bottom of the driveway.  For some reason, we’ve had a couple of uninvited guests just cruising around the property.  A gate and a couple of signs should discourage some of that.  Driving up the road is a challenge….  nobody in their right mind is going to want to stop at the gate and walk up.  Plus, in my experience, burglars are just too lazy for that kind of effort.

I have a guy coming tomorrow for the furnace and water heater.  I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’m willing to bet there will be dollar signs involved.  And finally, we had a sighting of the elusive electricians we’ve been waiting for.

I know the photo is a little blurry….  after waiting so long for them to show up, I was trying to be sneaky and quiet so as not to scare them off.  But I have proof….  we now have the mast, weather head, and meter base installed on the house, so the power company can install the new power pole and tie everything together.  Once that’s done, I’ll have a temporary power outlet so I won’t need to rely on the generator anymore. Great news.

I’m not even sure where to start this morning.  Over the past week and a half since my last post, I’ve begun composing a number of entries in my head.  Unfortunately, between being really busy taking care of establishing my current living situation and working on our new home, along with the lack on Internet connection, I just haven’t put any of those ideas up.  I’ll try to get caught up here:

Moving day was Friday, June 23rd.  I had been staying at the local KOA and driving about five miles each way to the property to work.  It was working out pretty well, since the site had full hook-ups and the guest building had a small store and laundry room, but the weekly cost was going to become pretty prohibitive fairly quickly, and that was never the plan anyhow.  Besides, there was a big event in Cripple Creek that weekend and all of the spaces were reserved, so I really needed to move along.  Mornings up here are usually cool, clear, and calm, but that Friday was white!  Not snowy white….  more like cloudy white.  Closer to sea level, we’d probably call it foggy, but at this elevation, we were actually in a very thick cloud.  Visibility was about 15 – 20 yards and negotiating the mountain switchbacks and streets of our little town with my truck and fifth-wheel was quite a challenge.  Thankfully, there was little traffic, my GPS helped me see how the road ahead looked, and I just took it really slow.  I may have irritated a few other drivers, but with the lack of visibility, I couldn’t see them or their fingers if they were trying to signal their displeasure.

I managed to get the trailer parked, leveled, and hooked up.  Let me tell you, it’s a strange feeling realizing this was going to be our home for awhile instead of just a fun place to sleep on those occasional, weekend camping trips we’ve enjoyed so much.  That anxiety was heightened a bit since our little homestead wasn’t quite set up for full-time occupancy just yet.  I had 20 amp electrical service in the barn, and a nice, level place to park, but that was it.

The solitude up here is absolutely amazing.  We can see the lights of the gold mine off in the distance, but the only other lights we see are the moon and stars, and the noises are limited to the chirping of the birds and the occasional howl of the coyotes.  I’ve noticed such a marked difference in my stress level between my infrequent trips down to Colorado Springs for hardware and my return to the mountains when that stress just seems to melt away.  I just have such a tough time with all the people, the traffic, and the never ending movement and noise of all kinds.  I may get to some of that later.

As remote as we are, there have actually been a number of visitors.  Family (and friends) are always welcome, of course.  Casey, Robert, and Bristol came up for the day and helped with a couple of small projects (well, Bristol basically just focused on being a cute 2 year old.  It may be awhile before I can get much meaningful help out of her).  Sandi arrived Friday evening.  Her trip was three-fold; to bring Preston back from his Washington visit, to bring her car down, and to spend a week with me.  It’s wonderful having her here.  Being apart for a few weeks was tough and I missed her an awful lot.  Plus, it’s nice to finally be able to collaborate on this project together, at the same time, and in the same place.  As an added surprise, Aly was in the passenger seat as they pulled up the driveway!  We had hoped that she’d be able to come down with me a few weeks ago, but work commitments just didn’t allow it.  Fortunately, things changed enough that she was able to help Sandi with the drive and spend a day here with me!  This visit was far too short, but what a wonderful treat!  A big thanks to all who helped make it possible.

A few other guests brought some very welcome creature comforts.  The well guys couldn’t get the old pump out to simply replace it because the wire had slipped down and got caught between the pump and the casing.  To make a long story short, they left that first day and returned a couple of days later with two boom trucks and two crews to pull the entire works out of the ground.  Everything went well and we now have a fully functioning well, so we’ve added water to our small list of available utilities.

I was trying to use my phone as a mobile hot spot, but service can be spotty.  I had a local Internet company come up to see if we could get a signal with their service, but the antenna, which is less than a half mile away, is pointed towards town and away from us, so that wan’t a viable option.  After a number of calls, I was finally able to get a Century Link tech up here who ran a phone line into the trailer for me.  We now have a hardwired phone, reliable, unlimited Internet, and last night, I even figured out how to connect the DVD player to the router so I can access Netflix.

The Digger Guy showed up last week to look at our septic tank dilemma.  I think he’s going to be able to help and with a little luck, his other jobs will wrap up and he can get started this week.  In the meantime, thanks to a lot of time, patience, and numerous aggravating phone calls, Sandi was able to arrange delivery of a porta-potty (with weekly service).  It means I won’t have to haul the trailer down the hill every few days to empty the tanks.  It might seem like a small thing, but it’s a huge addition to our little homestead.

Robert helped me get the satellite dish pointed correctly, so I have lots of channel options.  I got the antenna on top pointed so that I can get the news and weather from one of the local stations, and I wired a 30 amp outlet so I can plug the trailer in.  The only thing I need now is an electrician who will a) answer his phone, b) return my calls, and c) help us get the house connected.  The guy we started dealing with seems to have disappeared.  We have some leads on more local electricians, so hopefully, Sandi can track down some help.

I apologize for the long post, but this pretty much brings things up to date.  I still need to talk about my meeting with the former tenant here, but that’s probably a whole separate post.