8/26-28/14 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got an early start hoping to meet with Robert around noon. I had a visit with Priscilla in the rehab center and I also visited with Uncle Charles on the way up. I arrived at Camp Serendipity just about exactly at noon and found Robert, Tim, and Dee already at work.

After moving my gear in, I had a quick lunch and joined the loggers at 12:35. Robert felled (Robert says "felled" instead of "falled" which surprised me) one big Grand fir right down the lower roadway. They limbed the tree, stacked the brush, bucked the trunk into logs, and stacked the wood. By 2:15 they left. There are fire prevention rules that prohibit running chainsaws after 2 PM.

The loggers left the driveway looking as neat and clean as it had when they started. These guys do logging right: they hardly disturb the ground or even the duff on top of the ground; they keep the brush clean of dirt and haul it off to be burned in a power generating station, they stack the saw logs in a deck; and stack the rest of the wood in piles to be chipped or used as firewood. The place is indeed turning into "Serendipity Park", as Robert calls it.

After the loggers left, I watered the Giant sequoia, Brian, and then went into the woods to check on the rest of the sequoia trees.

I gave Earl a call just to let him know that the logging operation had started. He has been wondering when it would start and wants to follow the progress. I carried up a bag of inflatable River Rats that I had brought from home and that we may use when the guests come up next week. Shortly after that, Earl came by to have a look at the logging progress. We had a nice chat about trees and loggers.

On Wednesday morning, I was disappointed to find a mouse in the trap in the bedroom. Worse was the fact that all the tell-tale peanuts I had set out were gone, and the bait in the dining room trap had been nibbled away. I was hoping that the pattern of missing tell-tale peanuts would give me a clue as to where the mouse had entered. Evidently, this mouse had been all over the first floor, first eating all the tell-tale peanuts, then robbing the bait from the dining room trap, and finally getting nailed by the bedroom trap. I couldn't tell where it started. I also didn't know whether the action had happened that night, or whether I had overlooked the mouse and missing peanuts the day before. So, I abandoned the idea of tell-tale peanuts and just reset the traps. Back to square one again.

After breakfast, I went down with a short loop of rope and used it to skid the old temporary power pole over to a stack destined for firewood. Then I took a bunch of old partially rotting pieces of black Visqueen out of the ground. I had spread Visqueen under the log pile before my house logs were delivered, I had spread more under the trailer that had been parked for 19 years, and I had spread another piece under a pile of aggregate that I had used to build the springbox. There is still some of that aggregate left, so there is still some Visqueen under it. But I think I took up all the rest of it, which helps make Serendipity Park look a lot neater.

Next I brought my tools back up to the cabin and vacuumed the first floor of the cabin. It is now almost presentable for the company. I had an early lunch so that I would have that out of the way when the loggers showed up. Then I tried for a nap, but in 20 minutes, the loggers came. I went down and took some video shots of them working. I plan to make a video of the operation later.

After they left, I took Cindy into the woods and cleared a loop trail to the spring just in case some of the guests want to hike back there to see the Giant sequoia grove, or the spring, or anything else back in the woods. There were a couple of big trees that had fallen across the trail, so it took some doing to get the trail passable, which I finally did.

About 1 AM on Thursday morning, I was awakened by the snap of a mouse trap in the bedroom. The other traps were still baited, so this is a faint clue that the mouse is coming in on the bedroom side of the building. I threw the mouse carcass out, reset the trap and went back to bed.

When I got up, I had my breakfast, did some last minute tidying up and cleaning before the loggers showed up. I got my camera and got some more video shots of Robert climbing trees and limbing them on the way up. They had the driveway all cleared again so that I could get my truck out and leave for home. I left at 11:45 looking forward to the visit by the out of town guests on Labor Day. Robert said that he would be working the next morning and would put on a logging show for us. It should be fun.