Water rising

Trying something new today.  I'm blogging from the cabin using the Blogger app.  Of course I won't be able to publish until we get home  slush we don't have a network connection up here.  Please bear with me since I have not done this before. 

We arrived yesterday (Saturday) early afternoon.  Very cloudy day but no rain on the way up.  Temps were in the 60's.  Far short of the forecasted 80's.  The grass was about two feet tall with all this rain we've been having.  I had to fill the mower with gas four times to get it all mowed.  Noticed right away that the lake level was extremely high.  Very similar to last year.  Due to this we decided not to put the boat in the water to avoid a repeat of last year when the boat floated away because the water lifted it out of the lift.  All three kids were anxious to fish and started fishing shortly after we got the path to the lake mowed.  The fishing was good.

This morning (Sunday) the rain started about 5 a.m.  It continued until about noon.  The lake level continues to rise as I type this.  When the rain was ended I took apart my duct tape patch that I had applied to the main vent stack last time we were up.  I replaced the busted pipe and then added metal brackets to secure the pipe so it won't happen again in the future. 

As we were eating lunch today I spotted a porcupine wandering around in the yard.  As usual the dogs were outside.  I ran outside early enough to stop Luke from attacking it like he had done a few years back (he lost).  As I was typing this I went down to the lake to photograph a loon and ended up getting a bunch of photos of a bald eagle that was hanging out on the lake too.  The afternoon ended up being quite nice and Julissa even went for a swim in the chilly lake. 

We ended the evening with a campfire and marshmallows before the mosquitoes came out in force.  All in all, a pretty decent weekend even though it was not nearly as nice as forecast.

First trip of 2013

We made our first trip up on memorial weekend since the weather has been so lousy this year.  We've been so busy since then, that I have not taken to time to document it until now.  When we arrived I noticed that the sewer vent that I installed last year that comes out the roof was leaning over.  When I got inside I saw that the 3 inch PVC pipe was busted off.  It appears that the heavy wet snow from April had slid down the roof and applied so much weight to the pipe that it broke.

As you can see from the photo above, I had a 3 inch direct vent from outside to the utility room.  Luckily it must not have rained much after this happened because there was very minimal evidence of water damage in the utility room.  I temporally fixed the pipe, like any man would do, using duct tape.  One of our later trips up this year I will replace the PVC and also use stringers to attach the pipe to the wall next to it so that this can't happen again.

Being our first trip up for the year, we spent most of the time doing yard work.  Moving, and cutting back bushes.  I also got out the chainsaw and cut up a dead tree that had fallen last year.