A Beautiful Summer Weekend At The Compound

True to my promise of last week, I refused to stay home and fight with the plumbing this past weekend. I got out of work right at 5:00 and headed from home. Darn near didn't make it either.....coming thru Grand Haven, traffic was backed up like usual on a Friday. I was on the bike and hanging back a bit from the car in front of me, like I always do, when all of a sudden, BOOM! the car directly in front of me ran right into the back of the car in front of her. I'm not sure what the heck she was looking at but it obviously wasn't ahead....she hit the guy so hard the airbags deployed and the back window shattered. I had to get on the binders and squealed the tires a bit but other than that I was ok. My worry in those situations is always that the guy behind me ain't paying attention either and runs into me while I'm trying to avoid the moron ahead.....I pulled up along side her and asked if she was ok...she was upset and probably dazed a bit so I decided it was time to go. What a way for her weekend to start!

After that little bit of excitement I got home, loaded up the truck, grabbed the dogs and headed north. I pulled in the compound about 2 minutes after 7 and immediately got busy while Wanda made dinner. My first project was to figure out why the water wasn't working....arrrggg more plumbing problems! I took off the cap on the pump, tripped the switch and it took right off. Sounds like the switch is having issues so I called the folks responsible yesterday and they said they'd go fix or replace it. I'd opt for replace myself...fixing never seems to work quite right.

With the water on I got out the weed wacker and attacked them damn ferns until supper was ready After supper a trip up to the lodge for ice cream pretty much put the capper on the day. Once we got back to the campsite it was time for a fire and some relaxin'. I made it up till about 1am, mainly cuz I was busy looking up at a sky full of stars on a perfectly cool, clear night. Now that we have the campsite I really need to pick up a decent sized telescope.

Saturday morning I was the first one up and I piddled around the lot while the others slept. I noticed that a big limb on one of our big trees had broken off, most likely from Thursday night's high winds. So after breakfast, me and chris got the chainsaw out, got it ready and spent the next couple hours carefully cutting the branches supporting the limb, until we got it to fall to the ground. Then, it was simply a matter of cutting up the big limb into manageable pieces for the firepit.

By the time we got done with that project we were ready for a break and we all decided we'd take a little trip over to John's Produce, the place where I got the outhouse, and do a little shopping for stuff for the compound. It took awhile to get there going cross-country and we spent awhile looking at stuff so by the time we got back to camp it was midafternoon. I'd bought some washers to put in the hose that was leaking but when I went to remove it the fitting from the fixture stuck in the hose and then I had 100ft of hose and no way to attach it to one of the other outlets. (Didn't I say I wasn't going to do any plumbing this weekend??) So.....between that and needing a couple things for supper me and Chris jumped in the truck and headed for Home Depot and Meijers. By the time we got back to camp from that excusion it was 5 and we'd pretty much killed the whole afternoon running around the countryside. Needless to say not much got done at camp.

While Wanda made supper I repaired the hose and got the water situation back under control and then played some frizbee with Chris while the dogs ran back and forth between us, trying to get the disc. After a good meal I took the wife up to the lodge for ice cream and a little ride around Whiskey Creek and then it was back to camp for the evening. Another beautiful night with a sky just chock full of stars.

Sunday morning I was awakened at 6:30am by the grey ghost (Mercury) who had business to attend to so I got up, let him out and got dressed. I grabbed the leashes and me, Merc and Bailery took a longish stroll around the park while we waited for sleepy heads to wake up. By the time we got back Wanda was up so I set about making breakfast. After the usual fare of eggs, (over easy this time), Bacon and pancakes I started in on the project for the morning, new, better steps for the deck. We'd snagged some more wood from Dake more suitable for the steps so I got started by assembling the tools for the project. It took a couple hours but by late morning we had solid steps to traverse the deck with. The pics here show the old steps.....look next entry for a pic with the new ones.....

After the step project was completed I spent awhile, until it was time for the wife and Chris to head for home (1:30), with the weed wacker, putting the fear of God in ferns in Mason county. Once they were gone I decided to do something I haven't really done yet this year, kick back and relax in my little spot in the woods. I fired up the Ipod, sat down in a chair and promptly dozed off for a couple hours. Mercury and Bailey followed suit.

After the nap it was time for one more project before heading for home. I got out the big can of Thompson's Water Seal and proceeded to splash it all over the deck. It took the whole can to do the job and by the time I was done I was ready to shut down, lock up and head back to civilization. We got back to the house about 7 and spent the rest of the evening doing the usual laundry and dishes deal until the wife got home.

..and that's pretty much it for a really nice weekend. I have to remind myself that it's already damn near the middle of June and it's gonna go by quick. Seems like just last weekend I was waiting for things to turn green and now they are!

more later.

TC