Journal of Progress April 27-May 2

We are back in Mammoth trying to put our life back together with plans to finish the cabin.  We were waiting until it got warm enough so that if Barbara has to go potty outside in the middle of the night, it won't be freezing.  Still, even though the phone tells us it is 60 degrees outside, Barbara is more comfortable with a light jacket on both inside and out. Don is more comfortable in a tee shirt and jeans, unless the humidity is high enough to make it feel much colder. The wind doesn't bother either of us, because this year, we get to work INSIDE!

We are currently "camping" in the cabin.  With the current situation, we do not see ourselves going back to Provo or elsewhere for gainful employment.  Don continues to work as a security guard at the LDS motion picture studio in Goshen two nights a week.

First off, we had a bed conundrum.  A few years back, a daughter gave us a queen size bed she was no longer using.  When we tried to bring that down the stairs in Provo, it would not fit.  In the meantime, our daughter who lived in Provo had used our double bed for a number of years.  So we traded.  She took the queen size bed and we took the double.  The mattress on the double bed was getting old, so we bought a new mattress which we took out to Mammoth to use once we moved there.  Then, just as we were beginning to move out to Mammoth, our daughter in Provo asks if she can use the double size box springs and mattress.  She had bought an antique bed frame that used only double.  We gave her the old mattress and box springs.  We hated to just get rid of the queen size bed, as it actually was really comfortable.  We have been using a bed in Mammoth that a neighbor gave us that is a double bed.  Its mattress is really hard, so we put our new mattress on its box springs.  The picture is of our neighbor and Don getting the queen size mattress into our upstairs.

The next picture also requires a big story.  When we moved to Provo last winter, Barbara either took all of the frozen food with her or put it in the fridge freezer.  At some point, she came out to get some stuff from Mammoth including some of the food in the fridge freezer.  Somehow, that freezer had been turned off and all of the food was thawed, dripping, and stinky.  Barbara turned the freezer on, knowing she had an entire chicken, some salmon, and an entire turkey which could be used for fly bait.  The first summer we were out here, flies tormented us terribly.  Commercial fly traps are available, but expensive since you can make your own just fine, out of gallon-size jars.  Barbara thawed out the chicken and cut the wings and legs off to use in three different fly traps.  Then she froze the rest again for future use.  She added some water to the jars with the wings  and put on lids with holes drilled in them.  While she was working on this, she heard quite a ruckus in the sky.  Circling overhead and squawking were maybe three dozen seagulls.  We have not seen seagulls here before, but they must have come to the powerful smell of the rotting meat.  To Barbara, it didn't smell at all.  Below is a picture of one of our fly traps.

Down in our root cellar, Don is building can rollers in between the stubs.

Barbara is preparing a garden that is hopefully deer, rabbit, gopher, and squirrel proof.  She is using the buckets we had put our Arbor Day trees in . The trees all died.  These pictures are from a year ago when we built the enclosure for the Arbor Day trees.

Now Barbara pulled the weeds and put more potting soil in.  It is not consistently warm enough at night to put the plants out yet.

 We need to get our stove re-jetted for propane.  It was after closing hours when Don tried to call the propane dealer, so he had to wait until the next morning.  However, we were leaving for town fairly early so we decided we had better load the stove the evening before.  It was with considerable time, effort, and ingenuity that we succeeded in getting it loaded. Don rigged a ramp out of three 12-foot 2x4s, made a slider out of an old shipping pallet, and used a come-along to pull the stove up into the trailer. The come-along cable wasn't long enough to reach, so he rigged a load binder strap as a cable extender. When he ran out of cable, he didn't need to re-rig the come-along, 'cause he could just use the load binder tightener to shorten the strap. Sort of an improvised, second come-along.

Then, the next morning when we reached the gas company, they said, "Don't bring it to us.  We will come out there to work on it.  Fortunately, a neighbor happened by and Don and the neighbor were able to get it off the trailer in short order.

Don is making a frame around a window. The pieces fit exactly. Don says he's getting better at it!

Don is putting up some hooks to hang up Barbara's bird feeders and hanging plants.

Screwing the hooks in while balancing on top of the porch railing, above an eight foot drop was hard.

When we were still in Provo, we were taking a walk one evening and saw this porch swing out by the curb.  Barbara said she bet they were getting rid of it.  We thought we should ask.  Don was bashful to go knock on their door and ask so Barbara did.  It fits perfectly on our porch, though we had to disassemble it to get it onto the porch. Fortunately, it was designed for that. No tools needed!