2/20-22/18 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 11:30 and saw that there had been about a foot of new snow and the driveway had not been plowed. Robert had called me earlier and told me that he had cleared the berm from the county road the day before and that he would be up there working before I arrived.

I saw his truck already parked, but I misjudged the width of the clearing he had made in the berm. When I turned into the driveway, I was to the left of his clearing, so I promptly got high centered and stuck.

After putting on my boots, I got out and started digging the truck out of the snow. I worked for about a half hour before Tim noticed me and came down to help. After a little more digging and shoving, I got the truck out and then drove in and parked alongside Robert's truck.

Next, I shoveled the snow off the concrete steps not knowing that Robert had used his snow blower to make a nice trail up the roadway. When I got to the top, I learned that Robert was just about to fall a tree. I didn't have the camera, but I took some video of the falling with my cellphone.

Then I built a fire in the stove, hoisted the flag, and brought my gear up to the cabin. Robert wanted a tarp to cover the engine of the skidder while he tried to start it. I went down to the truck and brought a tarp up for him to use.

Robert and Tim came into the cabin and we all had lunch, did some planning, and chatted. Then we went back out and did some brush burning. They left at about 2:30. I went down to my truck and carried up four dining room chairs that we retired and replaced in Seattle. They will replace four of the ones I have been using which came from Joe and Lisa and which I salvaged instead of taking them to the dump.

Then I went out to the burn pile, burned some more brush, and watched the fire die out.

On Wednesday, the temperature on one of my thermometers read 19° and another one read 11°. I don't know which one is closer to being correct, but in any case, it was cold outside. I went out and split firewood until Robert and Tim showed up at 10:00. They brought some long extension cords for powering a propane heater he was going to use to warm up the skidder engine in order to get it started. The longest of the cords needed a plug, so Robert came into the cabin and attached a new plug to the end of the cord.

When he finished, I took the cord outside, plugged it into the outlet on the back porch, draped it over the berm under the eave, and then stretched it out as far as it would go, which was just past the privy.

When I went to attach the next cord, I discovered that the first cord now had two male ends. After considering options for what to do, I found a short extension cord I had made years ago that had a double receptacle wired to it. I took it outside to plug the two male ends into the receptacle in order to make the male-male connection. I inadvertently forgot that one of the male plugs was energized and at one point it brushed against the metal receptacle box. It instantly arced and blew the breaker in the cabin.

I went back to the cabin to reset the breaker, but it was more complicated than I had expected. The outside receptacle was GFI protected so I first tried to reset that. Then I checked the breaker in the distribution panel and saw that it was also tripped. So, I reset it. But there was still no power at the far end.

I took a lamp out to figure out where the problem was and plugged it into the double receptacle. No power. So, I went back to the cabin and found that there was still no power in the porch outlet. Instead of figuring out where the failure was, I plugged the cord into a kitchen outlet instead of the porch outlet and it worked. So, we used it that way. Later, we learned that another outlet on the failing circuit was also GFI protected, one in the utility room, so when we reset that breaker, the circuit was restored.

We took a lunch break and then went back out to work. Robert got the skidder started and started using it to skid logs up to the top of the cliff where he is collecting them. They also felled several more trees and burned a lot more brush. The two of them left at 2:30. I was beat and went in for a nap.

On Thursday morning, Dave called right after breakfast and we had another great conversation. Robert and Tim showed up at 9:00. He got the skidder started fairly quickly and then they spent the morning falling trees, skidding the logs out, and burning the slash. I took video shots of a lot of the work.

On one break, I offered the two of them the hornet's nest in the privy. They had both shown an interest. Robert took me up on the offer and said that he would have Tessie start looking into how to sell it.

I packed up my gear and left for home at 12:30 leaving the two of them still working in the woods.