More Log Gazebo

Log Gazebo (and bench)

Log Gazebo (side view)

We made major progress on the landscaping today.  We finished the major structure of the gazebo, adding the second beam and all of the top rails.  We drilled the top rails in with 5 and 7 inch lag bolts and mostly had to pre-drill pilot holes.  The big challenge we faced today was getting the 18 foot rails up on top of the beams.  We would work together to get one end up on one side and then walk the other one up the ladder to get to the top. 



Looking up at the Gazebo near sun set

None of the logs are straight.  None of the logs are the same length or diameter.  Several of the posts, beams, and rails show the original chainsaw cuts used to fell the trees.  Working with these organic materials is an interesting experience and requires many specific cuts and hardware.  In some cases, I drilled large holes to inset a lag bolt head when the 7 inch bolt would not get much purchase past a 6 inch log.

It was a cold spring day and by noon the wind was rushing and knocking down our ladders as we worked to erect the gazebo.  The forecast calls for temperatures of 39 degrees tonight, and I hope it doesn't freeze as that may compromise the curing of the concrete footers.

Pergola, Gazebo, Buck Fence, Clothesline and Benches

Gazebo through new trellis on old pergola

In the afternoon we moved the whole workshop from the gazebo back to the garage to make outdoor furniture.  My mother really likes benches and furniture put together from scraps.  She wanted several of these made as part of the landscaping project this summer.  Kian, Patrick, and I put four of these together, mostly from the top 4x4 posts remains used to construct the pergola, the bracing used to keep the pergola up under construction, and various scrap wood in Dad's collection from many projects past.  I love these small, over constructed scrap benches. 

Kian is very interested in construction and carpentry so I showed him a few things today.  By the end of the day I could call out that I wanted a 2x6 marked up at 37 and 3/4s and he was able to find the board, measure and mark with a pencil, finish his mark with a carpenter's square, and affix the piece to the saw horse with a wood clamp in preparation for the cut.  He even marked the waste side with an 'X' so I knew which side of the line to put the kerf.  We cut most of the pieces on my Dad's extremely high quality industrial Delta compound miter saw bolted to the garage work bench.  It cuts 4x4 square posts like a dream.  Marking and cutting was so efficient that my brother set up a second drill and drill bit for setting screws in the bench assembly process.  The shop was humming with drills, circular saws, miter saws, hammers, and belt sanders.



Dry Rock River Bed

Patrick and Kian are headed back to Hawaii tomorrow.  Lil, my mother and I will remain to continue landscaping tasks.  I think more logging, more tree planting, and additional irrigation line installation are in our future.




Work for the Neighbors

View along the lake

Author next to a giant spruce

I did a long run up to the upper boat dock of Fremont with my brother this morning.  It was beautiful and sunny.  The campground and boat dock are under construction but we ran along them anyhow.  I never really noticed the size of some of the trees in the campground.  There are truly some of the largest quaking aspen I have ever seen.  Also there are a pair of huge doug fir I have never noticed before.

Pronghorn

On the way back we ran into my old friend, the big muscular solo pronghorn male who hangs out at the bottom of the Fremont overlook.

Lilly deposits a 1000 pounder

In the afternoon, Lil and I went over to the neighbors place and put some boulders in her dry river bed.  This neighbor had the river bed that inspired my mother to have us create one.  Then the neighbor saw my mother's and wanted a bigger one.  Often times landscape or tree work in a neighborhood can lead to much more work.  I dissembled part of a fence to access boulders and then put it back up again after we had completed.  We might have moved a few dozen or so from nearby.

Many days of work and running seem to have caught up with me a bit today.  After finishing work over there I had to take a long nap before dinner.  Soon I am off to bed and dreams of tomorrow's landscaping...

Log Gazebo

Lil setting up our mobile shop

My father put up a flat platform for visitors to pitch tents on.  I am building a log frame and decorative roof around and on top of it to my Mother's specifications.

Lil and I moved a large amount of our shop to the tent platform to begin this work including a chain saw, gas, oil, reciprocating saw, water hose, drill, many drill bits, impact wrench, sawhorses, ladders, levels, wheelbarrow, and hammers and nails.  We also had a couple "death machines".  Death machines are my nephew Kian's word for tape measures after the end of one coiled in and severely bruised his finger.  My brother Patrick and I also moved 4 cinder blocks, 100 pounds of peat gravel, and 600 pounds of concrete mix.  All this was under TomTom's silent gaze.  We lost a day of labor at least moving 1000s of pounds of materials to this site by hand.

Lil and I then drilled the posts and bolted the steel strapping on each post to help secure the posts to the concrete footers.  She did a good job remembering how to assemble them as: "bolt, washer, strap, log, strap, washer, nut."  We started standing up the posts in the footer holes on cinder blocks with peat gravel for drainage.  Then Kian and Patrick came back from fishing.

Kian signing his bench

Kian's bench is really nice, but we thought it might need some more work, like the pergola always seems to.  We found my Father's magnifying glass and I showed Kian how to focus the sun's rays to burn wood.  He instantly took to this technique and promptly burnt his name, a smiley face, a very nice sail boat, and the year onto his new bench.  This did not take him very long, so Patrick helped him build a bow out of a willow branch.  Building an industrial stockpile of arrows occupied Kian for awhile longer.  Then he did some practicing to hone his aim.

Kian getting ready to hunt some antelope for dinner.



Gazebo post and antelope

Setting posts

Meanwhile, on the construction site, we mixed the concrete and covered it with plastic.  We will be keeping the cement damp a couple times a day for the next few days to cure properly.  There was a herd of antelope in the field behind the tent platform hanging out all day.  Several of the females look close to having kids.

After we got all the posts set, I cut them all to the level of the lowest post with my chain saw which was 8 feet and 6 inches off the tent platform.  The tent platform is exactly level and square 15 years or so after Dad built it.  This makes it a pleasure to build around and upon.  After cutting the posts to length, I v-notched them to receive the "beams".  Patrick and I were able to place the first one, pre-drill, and run giant 1/2 inch diameter, 10 inch long lag screws down from the top to affix them in place.

Gazebo with a singe rail up and some peaks in the background

Dry River Bed

I went for a quick run with my brother around the CCC ponds and then up to the lower boat dock on Fremont.  I noticed a set of moose prints across the new road base on our driveway as we headed out.  Last evening a yearling moose ran right through our backyard as I was blogging and I suspect the prints in the front are from his return trip.  On our run we saw many usual birds and also a few unusual ones.  A very large osprey was screaming at us when we ran passed the dam.  A great blue heron rose out of one of the CCC ponds as we ran past.  They always look like I imagine pterodactyls in flight.  A little bit of off trail running scared up a ground nesting bird, the Killdeer.  My brother had to identify it for me, as I could only guess that it was a member of the plover family.  It looks and behaves quite similarly to the snowy plover which I saw many of on the coast of California when I lived in Santa Maria.  We also saw a recently dead coyote behind the rocks in the parking lot of the boat dock.

Completed dry river bed

New trellis

Today was spent on a myriad of small tasks rather than a single large one like our logging yesterday.  I didn't really work with Lil today and she was incredibly productive without me.  She put together a new trellis on the old pergola.  She drilled 16 holes in the 8 pieces of heavy duty steel strapping we will use in the post footers tomorrow.  Finally, she laid the last couple tons of stone for the dry river bed, which was completed today!  My mother was inspired to install the dry river bed by a neighbor who had a smaller one installed.  Today that neighbor dropped by and requested that I come by with TomTom tomorrow to enlarge her dry river bed.  My tree removal jobs in Denver are starting to pile up, but I will probably take this job to make a bit of extra money and because it is convenient.



Kian's bench

Kian cuts bench legs

Kian cut down his first tree yesterday and we thought we could use it to make some furniture.  I marked out the log at 16 inch intervals and put him to work with the handsaw to cut bench legs.  We selected a nice trapezoid from the scrap pile and cut 1.25 inch holes in it.  Then we ran a hole saw through the ends of the legs Kian cut to get a flush fit.  Kian pounded the close fit legs into the bench seat with a heavy rubber mallet.  There was quite a bit of tree left so we used it as a backing piece.

 

Yesterday Dad talked to the landscaper who failed to remove the wire cage containing the trees.  The landscaper claimed the cage was biodegradable.  I think buried 12 gauge wire is biodegradable around here in not less than a thousand years.  In the mean time, the tree roots were restricted by the wire.  I hope my parents do not use this landscaper again.

 

Patrick helped me move the last 6-8 logs to the jobsite.  Wet 18 foot logs only 7 inches in diameter can be incredibly heavy and unwieldy.  Digging the last few holes for footers in the rocky landscape was a welcome relief.  Our final task of the day was to go down to Pinedale lumber and pick up all the hex bolts, washers, nuts, and lag screws for this project.  Because of the irregular size of the logs, this ended up being a detailed measuring and planning task with many pieces of hardware.  I hope we completed it correctly.

Materials finally fully transported to job site

 

Logging

Start of the log deck

An inviting path through the lodge pole and aspen

I was trying to fill a logging permit this morning so we went straight to work today, no time for morning recreation.  I had a large crew on staff today with my brother, niece and nephew.  We went up to Kelly Park and began logging beetle kill trees.  The last set of humans who logged the area were not very fastidious.  They cut down live trees, crushed live trees with inaccurate felling techniques, left whole logs and 4 foot tall stumps, and improperly drove through clearly marked non-motorized areas.  We only felled 7 trees, since most of what we harvested was cleaned from what they had dropped.  After the safety briefing, we each fell into natural roles in the team:

• Me: Log selection, felling, bucking, pulling logs to deck
• Patrick: Managing inventory, measuring and marking logs to length, pulling logs to deck
• Lil: Measuring and marking logs to length, trimming large branches
• Kian: Cutting off small branches with a hatchet, cutting small dead trees with a hatchet for future furniture projects

The quote I got from the local timber place was $1200-$1400 and they didn't even have all the logs in our manifest.  It ended up considerably cheaper to cut our own.

Patrick down in a boulder field taking some pictures of his own

Kian is ready to find some gold

Lil is ready to mine some gold

More lichenous boulders and a keyhole

I recalled an old gold mine about a mile off, so we took a break and hiked over and up to it.  The hike was through pretty steep and difficult terrain, but the whole group did great.  There were many large granite boulders next to us.  Kian does a lot of mining in video games but this was his first trip to a real one.

LOGZ!!!!!!

Lil filled out and posted our Forest Service permit to get us legal.  We loaded up all our posts and poles and drove back down to the house.


Patrick unloading a 20 footer like a boss

I have been dreading moving logs to the job site since I started this project.  TomTom has a set of pallet forks which would be ideal for the job.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get TomTom back to the job site without incurring a lot of damage to the existing landscape.  This means I had to move the logs solo one at a time out to the site by hand while Lil was working on a small unrelated carpentry project and Patrick and Kian were digging footers.  I got 16 logs out to the site with about 8 left to do.  I will likely need Patrick's help to move the largest and greenest of the logs tomorrow.

More stone work

The burnt skeleton of a buck fence, climbing up the hill to Fremont Lake

Fremont Lake: Sylvan Bay

Fremont Lake: Sandy Beach

I ran up Soda Lake road with my brother this morning.  Most of the pictures in this post are his.  I am buying a Samsung 5 when I get back to Denver.  We ran almost to Soda Lake and then took a right on an old 2 track and ran up to the West side of Fremont lake.  The last mile or so to get to the top was grueling and extremely steep.  This part of the hill has burned in the last decade or so but I was not around when it happened.  The extent of the fire is easily visible from the opposite side of the lake.  My mother and I discussed the incredible fields of bright yellow flowers at some length and were able to work together to mine our memory banks without having to resort to the internet.  It is Mule's Ear Flower,  Wyethia amplexicaulis.

During our entire run, a large tanker truck was filling from a canal off Pine Creek and then dumping somewhere near Soda Lake.  We saw many horses, so perhaps it was filling a water source for them.

After the run my mother served a simple blue collar lunch for us with baked beans, egg-salad sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, potato salad, coleslaw, and coffee.  As my nephew Kian asks: "What's for lunch dessert?"  The answer today was homemade apple crisp with granny smith apples and vanilla ice cream on the side.

After lunch I went down to the local Forest Service office and pulled a "post and pole" permit to allow us to cut materials for the next construction project.  Lil and I had gone to a local timber place a few days ago to purchase materials, but they were so expensive I think I will harvest them myself.  One of the wire enclosures blew over and took a newly planted sapling with it, but no damage was incurred.  I cut points into a couple of leftover pieces of lath with the reciprocating saw and Patrick and Mom staked the wire.

The dodge suspension fully depressed

Patrick and I went out and filled up another truckload of rock.  My friend Matty in Denver helped me put in custom 3000 pound rear leaf spring suspension for heavy loads a couple years back, but we definitely overloaded them today.  I am thinking we are at about 20 thousand pounds laid so far in the dry river bed.  This last batch is beautiful with a lot of black and multi-colored lichen.  We dumped it, but will use TomTom to move it into position another day.

I feel like many of my posts declare that the pergola is complete.  My brother and I excavated to lay flagstone underneath it yesterday and Lilly laid all of it with dirt and sand.  Kian build an expert cairn as an expression piece and also covered up the grey concrete footers with rocks.  I will no longer make the mistake of declaring the pergola finished.  Instead may I say that another iteration in pergola work has been performed.

Newest instantiation of the pergola, rock covering the footers, flagstone and cairn

The final project of the day was to scout out a place to log materials for the next building project.  We went up skyline drive and drove and hiked down many forest roads to try to find the perfect place.  Eventually we made it to Elkhart Park and the main road ended.  Kian enjoyed playing in the snow at the top.

Kian at Elkhart Park overlook winding up to send out the pitch at Patrick - photo cred to Patrick

And a perfect release!

On the way out I was a bit dejected that we hadn't found a very good spot to fill our lumber manifest.  Then I saw a place where my friend Sean Storrud and I used to go climbing.  We also once gathered old lodge poles to use as quarterstaves.  Sure enough, when we pulled into this part of the forest to scout, we saw that this was the perfect place to gather materials for the project.  In addition, I hope to gather a lot of forest materials for custom furniture my mother would like us to build.  Logging tomorrow?




Stone work

Some family had difficulty commenting.  I believe I have this resolved, but I moderate all comments so they may not show up immediately.

 Yesterday

A ton or 2 of rock

Pine Creek Flooding

I mostly took the day off yesterday, so I didn't make a blog post.  I ran up to the CCC ponds with my brother Pat and we got hailed on a bit and had a great run.  Pine creek was running extremely high.  We saw a blue bird very close to the trail, but not much else.  After our run, Patrick and I gathered a few thousand pounds of rocks and boulders from down the street with TomTom and my trailer for the following day (no such thing as a day off).  Later in the afternoon, we took Kian fishing and did a load of laundry.


Water flowing into the dam from Fremont Lake

Kian out fishing, can you spot the mother and baby moose?

Today

TomTom and myself

Kian watering the GBRG

I didn't run or cycle today but I hope to run a few miles tomorrow with Patrick.  We started the morning by finishing off the transplanting of GBRG (Great Basin Rye Grass) in front of the South facing porch.  Then we worked most of the day putting in a dry stone river bed in front of the house and setting flagstone under the 140 square feet footprint of the pergola.  Patrick, Kian, and Lil were all a tremendous help.  I have done a lot of stone work with good friends and family and it has always resulted in some of my favorite memories.

Lichenous rocks from the glacial moraine

When we ran out of boulders, Lilly and I went up to a friend's place and harvested some off the glacial moraine.  They were dropped by the glaciers about 20 thousand years ago, but we just picked them up a few hours ago to use in our landscaping project.  Thinking about the geological time scale doesn't make me feel insignificant, but rather relaxed.  There is really no rush.

Over thirty years ago, our father put 2 rather large boulders on top of the tansy bush in order to try to kill it.  Instead, the tansy bush has really thrived under and over the front steps.  Our mother gave me the charter to remove these boulders today.  Patrick and I wrapped chain around them and pulled them out with TomTom.  Then we set the boulders at the start of the dry river bed.
 

Can you spot the antelope?

 We may do some logging tomorrow...