28th - snow this morning 35 degrees now

Here is a sketch of the side view of the bridge that "we" will be building. Hoping to dig the foundation for it this weekend.

25th - GOLD FEVER

We went gold hunting on Saturday. Found a little.

Brandon putting the dirt through the sluice to separate the gold from the dirt.
Pepper supervising the operation. Fred also found a deer antler.
Nothing to do with gold hunting. A picture of the bridge form just to show the size of it compared to me.

25th, 60 degrees-windy

HIKE THROUGH REFRIGERATOR CANYON

Here are some pictures of our hike through refrigerator canyon on Friday. The weather was perfect. It was not too hot and no bugs. Taking our first break.
Going through refrigerator canyon. It is about 10 degrees cooler than the outside temperature.Brandon finally got to see some snow on his visit.

21st - 34 degrees

Here are some pictures of Brandon and Fred working on the form for the bridge. We are hoping to have it done before company starts coming in June.

Pepper enjoying the snow about 2 1/2 weeks ago.

21st- fire

Yesterday afternoon there was a pretty big fire in a neighboring County. York VFD and others were paged to assist. I met one of our trucks near Helena and we drove the 30 miles to the fire.

It was a controlled burn that got out of control when the wind started blowing hard. By the time we got there, the fire was under control but still being put out. A warehouse and some other buildings had burned down.

The truck we brought is used to haul water.

A fold-a-tank was placed next to an engine and we dumped water into that. The engine then pumped water from the tank to another engine which was putting out the fire.

I took some pictures while we were waiting for the truck in front of ours to dump.

Newspaper article about the fire:

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007/03/21/helena_top/a01032107_01.txt

18th - high about 65

Warm weather this weekend. I think it got up over 70 yesterday.

Brandon learned how to use the GPS. Here he is on a "scavenger hunt" finding the 2 flags and the deer antler.




He also has been having fun shooting his bow.

16th- high ~ 50

I took off today to get some work done on the bridge. After cutting the curves out of plywood, I screwed them together to make the long curves.

Next, 2x4 s on 12 inch centers.

And then I covered it with 3/8 inch plywood.

This will be the form for the bottom of the arch bridge. I will have to make another form for the top. The idea is to pour 3 arches, each 4 feet wide. Then they will be placed side by side over the creek using a crane. The side arches will also each have a wall and will weigh about 19000 lbs.

Here is sort of a side view of the bridge. You can see the shape of the wall. The arch is the bottom circular part. Gravel will be used to fill in between the walls.

Brandon is flying in today and it looks like we will have nice weather. We plan to do some mountain bike riding and who knows what else.

12th - warm

Got started on the bridge forms today.
The radius for these parts is about 10 feet, so it could be cut with a circular saw.
Also had Wildland Fire training all weekend. Here we are practicing deploying emergency fire shelters.

3rd - High 43

Today we burned the old barn on our place. It was a good time to do it since we had some snow still on the ground.

Some older pictures.....

Here is a picture from one year ago when I had just gutted the house. It's come a long way but there is still a lot to do. What a mess.

Here is Brandon at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone.

Me and T.

1st- projects and more projects

Guitar

Finally! The guitar is done. I took it to a shop and had them do the final set up for me so I could be sure everything was adjusted and set properly for the sound. And it does sound good. As good as the Martin I think, maybe a little less bass but that's ok. I was a little worried that the small soundhole might mute the sound but it has good volume. I may sell the Martin.

Bed

The bed should be done this weekend. I am always optimistic on how long it takes for these projects. At first I thought I could do it over the 3 day weekend but a few extra days is not bad.

Bridge

I will be starting the bridge replacement pretty soon. Right now we have an old railroad car that was converted into a bridge that is in pretty rough shape. The plan is to replace it with an stone arch bridge. It will actually be concrete and faced with stone.

House Addition

I had planned on starting this by now but winter finally arrived in February and I was wanting to get the other things done anyway. Right now, the plan is to build part of the addition this summer and then do the rest probably next summer.