Trip Date: June 21, 2022
Find this SpotSo far this year, I have been able to keep up with the every other week schedule of trying to get up here. It has been great; weather progress, sky, food, experiences. This trip, Bob came up Monday and between Monday and when I got there Tuesday afternoon, he had heaved full sheets of plywood up onto the roof and nailed them down. We left 8 sheets behind from last trip and he brought up another 4 with him. 10 of the 12 were already in place. I helped him position 1 piece and he did all the rest alone. I have had the same experience working up here alone. It is more difficult with less help, but it also is often incredibly productive.
I came up I-5 to Redneck Bluff and the headed East on 36. Coming home on Highway 36 last trip, just above Payne Creek, I started to notice a strange humming/vibration coming from the back of the truck. Being the stone head that I am, I didn’t want to stop even for a minute to see what I could see, but instead waited until I almost ran out of gas and peed on myself in Williams before I stopped. By then, I saw that I had lost both the tops to my water barrels, rendering them useless for all eternity. They aren’t expensive to replace, but holy cow. Could have made things much simpler if I had just pulled over when I first noticed the noise. May not have found the lids, but looking back…
This was my penance for not stopping when I first noticed the noise. Just below the spot where I first noticed the noise, there was a huge construction project. I immediately got the feeling that somebody from this crew may have seen them while they were prepping the road for their work, or they flung off down the hill out of sight and lost forever. After getting through the construction stop, I pulled over opposite a group of buildings where I first noticed the noise. I got out and wandered around, checked both shoulders of the road and down the embankment of the north side. I didn’t spend much time figuring if they were visible from the road, someone probably took them already, and if they were not visible, I wouldn’t see them. Again, the thought of spending $80 to replace them limited my enthusiasm for an exhaustive search.
Three of four more road construction stops made the ride much longer than usual, and the search didn’t help. It was almost 2:00 by the time I got up top and greeted Bob at the kitchen. I unloaded and set my stuff up, and by the time I got down to his cabin, he was just about wrapping up. It really took shape with the plywood siding on. It just keeps looking better and better with each step. We had initially discussed try to replace my cabin window, but today was not the day. Bob was excited about having the hot water system set up and gladly took a nice shower. We had cocktails and I got the BBQ going for hotdogs and burgers left over from our Faadgja’s Day celebration.
This day was the solstice and the light lingered long after I had gone to bed. I talked to Kristen and read a little from a book Dennis gave me until it was finally dark. By the time I got up and 6:15, Bob was already out at the cabin working. Dude is outrageous. He just needed a little bit to finish off a couple things and tie it all up for next time. I started to remove the inside window trim and kept making a glass shard mess and sweeping it up. By the time Bob came down with the ladders, I had the inside pretty well prepped for the serious work of trying to cut away all the caulking, especially around the outside that still firmly held that glass in place.
We got out our box cutter knives and went to work on the caulking. We cut and cut until we could see the end of the blade passing under the glass. Still the 6’ x 42” sheet wasn’t budging. We cut and cut and had to kind of mash through a thick black mass of gook that held the 2 panes of glass together before it burst. This muck proved to be the tough going. We cut from the inside and cut from the outside. We got a short real jagged toothed knife and raged with that. Bob started gently prying with a nail puller/pry bar and she finally gave up a corner, but not the other 3. At least know we had a beach head and could identify the strong holds.
Eventually, we got our gloves on and gently leaned against the glass sheet. The top seemed to be giving, and the South side was free, but the bottom was still soundly connected to the sill. More cutting, more aggressively, less delicately, less like we were dealing with glass, and more like we couldn’t believe it wasn’t free yet. Eventually she popped, and Bob had to rush around from the outside to help lay her down. It took over an hour, but we got it out in one piece and we didn’t destroy the outside trim or paint at all. It really was best case.
Bob scraped the hell out of the sill to get rid of the last of the gooey caulking then we headed down to the boneyard to get the other window pane I thought was going to be exactly the same size, therefore making for a super easy swap. We carried it up the road and lifted it into place. Voila! A perfect fit. Pretty incredible really to have another dual pane door that I just happen to be using as a window. Bob put a load of new caulking around the wood trim and we lifted her into place. A little firm pressure and she held up just fine. Bob scraped the hell out of the 4 interior 2×2 trim pieces so they would make a nice clean fit. We screwed the longer top and bottom pieces into place, and eventually decided just to cut new side trim pieces. All said and done, perhaps 2 hours and we were totally done.
I was ecstatic to have that job done. It was tough to break the glass and then want to replace it to keep the dual pane glass, so the job just hung over my head for a while. I was stoked to have it behind me. With that Bob headed on down the hill and was gone. I was now waiting for Mike to arrive, but knew I had a few hours. I got some breakfast and swept and swiffered my cabin again. I tuned up my list of chores and started to work on finishing the Pine paneling in my cabin. It took me a long time to cut and careful screw in the replacement board for the one that shattered the glass in the first place, but once past that board, it was smooth sailing. I was nearly done when Mike pulled up top the hill.
I went out the greet Mike and we talked about his ride up. After getting his full report, he went off to unload his rig and I went back to the paneling. I needed his help to get the last 2 pieces installed up top and that was that. I swept up yet again, helped Mike add water to the trailer, showed him the Lysol spray and Clorox wipes Kristen sent up with me, and got him unloaded. He arrived about 1:30, which is about an hour earlier than usual, so he had some time to unload, set up, talk a little, and then take a nap before dinner. I took a sweet shower and poured myself a cocktail before he joined me. It always blows me away how much we get done, and how much things can improve in such little time. These again, were 2 incredibly productive days.
When Mike came out we had cocktails and talked and BBQ’d the marinated chicken he brought up. We threw a homemade organic squash and sweet peppers on the grill as well. After a delicious dinner, we watched an incredible sunset. Even though it was still dusk, we both headed for bed. I slept great with the window replaced, the paneling finished, and hopefully that last of the tiny glass fragments swept and swiffered up. I will do a little bit of window trim and hang the curtains, and that will be about it for my cabin.
I wasn’t up too early but Mike was up late, so I was raring to go by the time he got going. I had already removed the foam board insulation from inside the giant styrofoam box that Kristen and I get our frozen Nutrisystem food in and stuffed an old shade tent top into it. This muffled the water pump noise from the shower set up really well and was a vast improvement to the perhaps even louder noise coming from the pump inside the Styrofoam with the hardboard pieces in it.
The morning was warm already, so we hung on the Western addition in the shade. I didn’t have a ton of energy but I wanted to get going before it got too hot. I gave Mike the job of figuring out the mounting bracket for the solar panel and left him in the kitchen to work on that. I went out to dig out the poopy hole for the RV. I had left the railroad ties I wanted to use as the base for the poopy pit cover. Thankfully my chainsaw fired up and I easily cut them to length. However, every time I climber down the ladder into the pit, all this loose material followed me in, so I spent a considerable time just shoveling out the pit.
Eventually, I got Mike to come help me prop up the railroad tie legs while I screwed on the 2×6 frame. That at least gave me a lateral connection. The cross pieces would have to wait as I didn’t have any 2×4 to work with. By then, Mike had made some progress on the solar panel mounting hardware so I followed him back to the kitchen for some lunch. Eventually we got the legs on the panel frame where we wanted them and I got up on the kitchen roof to get it into place. We measured the rafters from below and it appeared we could adjust the frame legs to fit the rafters. Unfortunately, we couldn’t tighten the adjustment on the legs until we set it in place on the roof, but once on the roof, we couldn’t get to the adjustment screws. In hind sight, we should have simply screwed in a sister rafter from below to make the mounting much easier, but that didn’t occur to me until much later. We got the feet screwed to the rafters well, but the adjustment screws from the frame to the legs could be tighter. It is a very low profile panel, so I think we will be fine, but it isn’t as tight as I would like it to be.
Nonetheless, we hooked up the extension wires and plugged them into the adapter and them into the power box and Voila!, she was charging. We have never used the power box below the 75% indicator light so I do not believe we will ever need to charge the power box while we are there, but you never know. The solar panel is a nice back up just in case and another power source if need be. It is another little piece of insurance up there, and especially nice since I do not have to lug it back and forth and set it up and take it down each trip. With the Mike went off to take a nap and I got to sweeping up mouse poop.
When Bob got up here Monday morning he said our mouse trap was empty so he had just set it outside. He didn’t see any poop on the counter or in the sink, but he did notice some inside the stove. I do think that was from last time we were up here, but nonetheless, no new poop was a step in the right direction. I emptied all the canned food, waters, and miscellaneous from under the counter and swept it all clean. While I was sticking my head up there, I cut a few boards to try to make a tight seal inside the cabinet. It was obvious where the light pressboard backing had pulled away allowing access to all critters alike.
As I was beginning to reload the cabinet, Mikey appeared from his slumber and helped me get it all back in. The completion of this task indicated it was cocktail time. I told Mike about my trip to SF and seeing Clara, Janet, and all the SI guys, and all the old sights, and my conversation with Dennis the night after I got back. This started a nice long conversation about our childhood, growing up in SF, and family and friends. We talked about Tim quite a bit, the first time ever for us. It was a good beginning.
We BBQ’d the last of the hot dogs and burgers and had a can o’ peas for our greens. The sunset was off the hook. It was probably cool enough for a fire, but it seemed like a lot of work at the time. I settled for adding 2 more courses of fire bricks to the ring for no particular reason. We walked the loop road and I showed Mike where I had moved the wood pile across from my cabin, how I cleaned up the bone yard and where I moved the pile of tools and materials from the tree by the back of the trailer. It is all a little bit more cleaned up and orderly up there now. We talked about adding a couple more cabins or trailers or sleeping vans for accommodations. At some point I texted Steph about having all the family up on Hart Hill. It was an utterly fantastic night.
We were both up pretty early and had coffee and breakfast on the Western Addition. Mike and I both packed up and organized our gear. Mike swiffered the trailer and noted how much dirt came off the floors. He loaded his rig while I gathered some materials to mark the NW corner and the Western midpoint depending on what I found out in the field at the existing markers. Mike followed me down the hill and I hopped in his car to show him the NE corner marker, which is clearly marked alongside Termo-Grasshopper road, so we headed back to South Grasshopper, and out task at hand. I found the NW marker in my binoculars before heading out and just went out with wire, snips, and a can of yellow paint to find the marker.
When I got out there, I was able to use wooden stakes to attach a long white plastic tube to the T post. The additional height and the white tube with a little yellow painted on top allowed it to be very visible to the naked eye from the road. I had intended to walk back to Mike at the road, gear up, and then head out to find the midpoint, but the NW marking went so well, I yelled to Mike to just drive down to the SW corner to help guide me down the line. By the time he parked and got out in his white shirt, he helped guide me to the midpoint. Again, I found enough stuff on the ground to make a good marker.
This time, there was both a white plastic tube and another T post. It was severely bent, most likely run over by a tractor, giving it about a 45 degree bend to the upper third of the metal post. Again, I was able to use the wooden stakes jammed up inside the tube to make a sleeve holding the T posts on top of each other. I used the baling wire to wire it all tightly together and sprayed the hell out of the top of the T post that was now about 7 feet tall and bright yellow. My concern that the yellow might blend in with the drying grass was allayed when I got back to the road with Mike and looked out into the field.
With yet another task accomplished, Mike headed on down the road, feeling much better than this drive last time. It was a great trip for him, even though it was only 2 nights. He suggested that this might be the last trip for him until it cools off in the Fall, but we will see. I headed back to camp and rounded up the remaining tools by the pit and elsewhere. I loaded the truck and futzed with the loose drain pipe under the sink at the shitter. I went down my list of jobs and was able to knock them all off except for the stairs coming off the deck between the front of the trailer and my cabin. Why not; it was still early and the work area was perfectly situated in the shade.
I got back out the tools I needed and saw the stair treads and stringers I had brought over on previous trips. I was ready to rock. I reluctantly cut off the top step from the stringer to make it a 3 stepper instead of 4, as I had not built steps on my own before, but it turned out to be the right move. I made a custom notch in it and made the same cuts to the other stringer. They attached to the deck well and I added an excess of additional blocking to them. The stair tread cuts and attaching went easily. I was one tread short, so I hiked out to Bob’s cabin site and pilfered an old weathered board I thought was Douglas Fir like the rest of the deck and material we had been using, but it turned out to be a nice piece of old Redwood. This last board of the project being a little different amused me.
With everything on my to-do list done, I dragged 2 of the rubber mats I got off Craig’s List over to the Western Addition and laid them on the deck by the shower. Then I drug a piece of the aluminum road/airport surface that Bob’s neighbor apparently got from the Air Force and put it on top of the rubber mats. This gave us a great platform to stand on for the shower and the aluminum piece made the shower area approximately even to the step on the deck. That area is really coming together. I brought the other 2 mats I got to the shower area at the back of the trailer. It doesn’t get a lot of use now, but they can be moved later if need be.
It was still earlier than I had planned to leave, but I literally had nothing else to do and rather than sitting about for an hour or so, I had a nice lunch and headed on down the hill. I listened to tunes all the way down 395 and 80 and was home in a few minutes over 4 hours. It was blazing hot in Sacramento and I felt bad about feeling like it was warmer than I wanted it to be up on the Hill with the beautiful breeze and all that shade. Oh well. I am still working on being present and being appreciative.
Hart Hill; Me, Mike, Bob and the Wildflowers Photo Gallery
