Fourth of July, 2013

Fourth of July this year was a no fireworks event due to the extreme dry weather and fires. As of the time of this post the fire has grown to over 79,000 acres and evacuation notices have been issued for residence along the Chena Hot Springs Road area. But of course this is off topic, as we loaded up the motorhome and drove to 12 Mile Summit on the Steese Hwy so I could start doing some work on the foundation corners of our 2nd cabin, this one is 6.4 miles from the parking area and another beautiful location that is north of us rather than south.

Trish and I drove up on the morning of July 4th., I figured it was a four day weekend and we’d sleep in a bit and get a good start in morning. The day started out with clear blue skies and made for an enjoyable drive up. I say up since 12 Mile Summit, where we made camp is above 3,000 feet elevation. When we arrived at the gravel pit (our camping area) it was pretty empty, nice and quit. I was beginning to think we’d lucked out and weren’t going to have any neighbors, boy howdy was I wrong. By Friday evening we had 8 RV’s parking in there and a couple of them were, how do I say, self centered idiots who had no manners or grace. Hey I didn’t even have to cuss for that one, might be a first as I was cussing Friday.

I did expect more folks than us with the Chena Rec Area camp grounds closed because of the fires, but not a bunch of jerks driving by our RV at 45 miles an hour on a dry dirt road. Anywho, we spent Thursday in camp and the dogs got lots of walks, which they enjoyed and I sat around and read a couple of good short books.

Friday I got up and lazed around for a few hours then after breakfast loaded up the gravel and tools and headed into the cabin site to commence digging out my corner posts and start to work on them. Dean and I took a bunch of railroad ties and a couple of 16 foot beams in the year before last for his place, however various issues in life have put him behind his schedule to get his cabin in, so one of my tasks was to move the railroad ties and beams from his cabin site to mine and put the material to some good use.

By the end of Friday I had all four corners dug out and sort of leveled, will need more ¾ minus gravel to finish up the leveling. By Saturday I had all the Railroad ties cut to size and dry fitted with the beams on top.

So now I need 16 more 60# bags of gravel, some timber lock screws and may a bit of wood oil to seal the beams and I’m good for this year. Next year I’m hoping to get the floor joist and decking hauled in and put up, then I’ll be good until the Hurricane cabin is finished. I figured this will at least give me a platform off the ground I can set up the 10×12 foot wall tent and wood stove on.

So ends another Fourth of July and a nice one it was even considering the idiots we had camp close to us for a night or two. Just too bad we never saw any wild life, no Moose, Caribou nor Bears.