A great weekend coming up

[cody]

I'm finishing up a couple of small projects in the bus then later today me and jamie will be firing the beast up and taking the bus to Big Erics Bridge on the Big Huron River in Skanee, just about a mile from the Skanee house.  It's a rustic campground on one of the best salmon/trout rivers in Michigan, the spring and fall runs are great, this time of the year it's all brook trout fishing and slapping mosquitos.  I don't do much fishing anymore but I do enjoy the river, there is a vein of agate that runs across the river and I sometimes chip off a couple of pieces for a belt buckle or something, my dad made a fireplace out of it years ago and it turned out great but it's a big job to get chunks that big, the fireplace he built was about 5 foot deep by 8 ft long, the mantle was about 5 ft off the floor, lots of cement poured for the footing but he had gathered agate and copper for a year or so before he built it, that was the house I grew up in on the lake. Thats about 5 miles from the bridge.  On sunday we'll probably drop the bus off at the skanee house and leave it there for a bit, I got a bunch of work I want to do on the house and have a monster pile of material inside it so the bus will provide a comfortable place to be while I whittle down the pile lol, got a roof to work on and several floors that need the hardwood put down and I want to make it handicap accessable for this old guy, I don't have a lot of work planned but I did buy 2-50 lb boxes of nails, one of 16D and one of 12D and roofing nails.

[Busted Knuckle]

Cody,
Hey it's OK for you to use those floor nails, but don't you dare get up on that roof and try to use the roofing nails!
That's a job for your "SIL" while you and Jamie sit on the ground watching and taking turns using a BB gun or even a 22 keeping him busy and "alert".  Wouldn't want him to fall an get hurt (until after he's done) would ya? 
  BK 

PS It was great to talk to you and Libby the other day and I'm sending you that other # now!

Oh yeah Niles says if it weren't so stink'n muggy it would be a great place to hang out! (say's he musta been crazy to leave Colorado so soon!)

[cody]

BK, the roof shouldn't be so bad, I'm going to scare up some scaffolding, got a lot of contractor friends that have massive piles of scaffolds lol, SIL can't come close, I've got a court order preventing him from even thinking about us.

[Busted Knuckle]

lol, SIL can't come close, I've got a court order preventing him from even thinking about us.

Darn sounded like a good plan to me. It give him a good chance to "redeem" himself for some of the grief he's caused.
And when done he could "accidentally" fall off!
  BK 

[Bob & Tracey]

Hey Cody,

You just gave us another place to go when we come up your way. We had planed to do it this year but...

Enjoy the river,
Bob

[cody]

Bob, we've got endless places like this in our area, one of the things I enjoy is taking the metal detector and walking upstream in the river for gold, this area is largely unexplored for things like that and extremely wild and untouched for the most part, one campground is on a lake in sorta like a jackpine sandy area thats probably 40 miles across, people hook up metal detector coils to there quads and ride around looking for buried float copper, thats pure copper chunks that the glaciers left, some are several tons but most run around 100 pounds or so, with a lot running several hundred pounds.  One piece of float copper was found by divers off copper harbor and they are still trying to raise it, the corp of engineers brought up one piec e they broke off it.     http://www.pasty.com/discuss/messages/313/691.html    that report of the 80K pound chunk on quincy hill was wrong it only weighed 71,000 pounds, the nice thing was that it was on state land so the kid that found it got to keep it, he sold it to an attorney group in chicago that have it on display outside their office building.

[qayqayt]

A great weekend coming up for us too.  We live in Vancouver BC and we're heading up to Logan Lake, a small mining town roughly 5 hours north of here.  We'll take the scenic route out the Fraser Valley, through Hope and along the Fraser Canyon past Spuzzum, Boston Bar, Lytton through Spences Bridge and over to Merritt then North to Logan Lake. 

Lots of ex-Vancouverites have retired up there.  Lots of fishing, mountain bike trails and fresh air in the area.  We go up every August to meet up with friends for a memorial bocce tournament, barbeque and maybe a pop or two. 

I'm a bit "gun shy" with our coach these days.  We've had breakdowns on 2 of our last 3 trips, but it looks like all our electrical problems are fixed.  I just need to regain my confidence in the bus and relax. 

We stopped by the coach last night to start the fridge and put all the linen on and I started the pretrip inspection.  We're off in a couple of hours.  Have a great wekend everyone!!

Bryan

[fe2_o3]

Bryan;  First enjoy your trip. Then worry about the coach. What did you find was shutting the coach off. Was it electrical or fuel?..Cable

[cody]

Jamie and I got back last night, the campground was very crowded, one of those little Scamp trailers was down the road a ways so there were more people than what I'm used to seeing there.  We took the bus to the Skanee house, only a mile up the road from the camp ground, puttered around and left the bus there to come in and spend the night and get the truck, we're heading back out either this evening or tomorrow morning for a day or so to work on the house, I took a couple of pics of the campground and the river, if I can figure how to load them into this pc I'll post them.

[fe2_o3]

Cody said "one of those little Scamp trailers was down the road a ways"
   

     Didn't you have a fly swatter?..Cable

[qayqayt]

We're back from our trip too.  The bus passed all the challenges that were "all in my head" according to Rhonda.  The shut off problem turned out to be a corroded circuit breaker located in the panel in the drivers area.  When my friend James pulled the breaker out, it was so rusty it looked like it came off the Titanic.  We pulled it apart and the inside was burnt.  We think that once it cooled down, I could start the engine.  It wasn't easy finding a replacement 24 volt 8 amp breaker.

Bryan

[fe2_o3]

 Bryan; Congrats on the good trip. Good find on that circuit breaker. Thank for sharing...Cable

[cody]

And the fun continues, got a bunch of the roof done at the skanee house then it got too hot to walk on it much so I came in and libby was gone to her moms place to sort stuff with her sister so I got a total of 7 windows installed at this house, I like it when its quiet and nobody to yell at me, now it's another weekend and back to slacking lol.

[John316]

Cool, Cody.

Now take a break. Have a Dr. Pepper and a poptart. 

God bless,

John

[cody]

No time for a break, john, the war department will be back sunday evening so if I want to get anything done it has to be while she is gone, I've got a garage half full of stuff to do/fix/install/build etc here, about 10 windows left to deal with, a new furnace to wrassle into the basement, an icemaker to hook up along with new plumbing and in my spare time I'm getting set to side this house, out in skanee I've got the roof to finish, several floors to put the hardwood down on, 4 windows to install, new plumbing, the dining room out there is full of material, only a walkway between the piles, then as I have time I'm siding it, ripping off the old T-111 siding and putting on vinyl, then in my spare time I'm tinkering with the anti-koa, haven't got much done there tho and it's 4ft high in weeds but goldenrods make nice flowers too lol.  Yesterday I found out that the local St Vincent store, a thrift store run by the catholic church (I'm lutheran lol) was throwing out nice furniture stuff cause it needed repair so I bought a nice walnut rocker and then got volunteered to spend one day a week picking up broken furniture that can be repaired and then returning it to the store to be sold, their nice people and they do a lot of good for people in this area. So thats what I do on my breaks lol, I'll get what I can done and what doesn't get done while her back is turned I'll sneak it done while libby is napping lol.