'Site' seeing......

7:55 am - Saturday - January 25th - TWW - 34° F, humidity 12%, wind 10 mph out of the south by southeast....cloudy today with a forecast high of 52° F....winds in the low 20's this afternoon for about 4 hours.  On this date in 2020 TLE and I were living at the Riverside, CA Elks Lodge.....

.....$10/night for 20 amps of electricity.....not bad, and very close to the Mission Inn.  The view this morning.....

I was out working with Charles around 9 am....way too cold to be doing anything outside at 36° F, but we were working on the tractor again.  Charles and Phyllis were going to be leaving around mid morning so we needed to finish what we began Thursday afternoon.  While we did get the left rear tire reinflated (liquid + air) it appeared the Schrader valve stem had a slow leak.  Fortunately I carry extra Schrader valve stems, so I just unscrewed the defective one, and screwed in the new one.  I had to take off my gloves to do the deed, and by the time I was finished my hands were numb with cold.  Then it was a matter of repressurizing the tire.  Charles got the PSI up to 24, and we called it good.....

.....by 10 am, or shortly thereafter, Charles and Phyllis were on their way back south.  I finished my work on the 'new' 1969 Chevrolet C90 dump truck (checking the oil and coolant levels), then moved it back to its parking spot out by the barn.  I've ordered a new seat cover, which should arrive next week, and I still need to check all the bulbs for the turn signals, and brakes on the truck....I think some of them have burned out.

Next, the main attraction of the day.....use the Ford tractor to begin grading our permanent site next to the trailer.  Before I could start moving dirt, I needed to remove a bunch of surface rocks from the site to make it easier to scrape dirt from the high end of the site to the low end to get it close to level before we begin hauling gravel from our gravel pile out near the gate to the property.  It didn't appear that there were many rocks, but you know how that goes.  What you see on the surface is only about 10-20% of the actual rock.  By the time I was done I had a pile of rocks weighing between 500 and a 1,000 pounds to move.  That new prybar I bought at Harbor Freight worked amazingly well, which gives me hope for removing those rocks out on the entrance road in the near future.  Considering how many rocks I had to lever out the dirt it didn't take that long.....

....soon I was using the bucket on the Ford tractor to drag dirt from the high side to the low side, then it came down to plain old manual labor....I had to rake all of the small rocks out, and then begin smoothing the site from front to back....

.....I managed to create a pad about 40' long and 12' wide.  The coach is 36' long and 8' wide, so plenty of room to place the coach exactly where we want it.  After I finished raking I took an 8' long 2" x 4" and laid it side to side at the front and back of the site, then using my 3' long construction level laid on the 2" x 4" found it was very close to level, and the back of the site (in the background of the 3rd picture) is now 5-6" higher than it was before.  We will be pulling into the site with the front of the coach at the back of the site so the passenger side of the coach will face the trailer.  The front wheels will rest on the raised pad at the rear....

  

....next up we'll put down some 'underlayment' fabric on the ground, and then begin hauling gravel.  The underlayment will keep the gravel from being pressed into the ground over time, especially when the ground gets wet from any future rain.  As you know, this has been an incredibly dry winter so far here in the Seligman area, but we do have snow and rain forecast for early next week....we'll see.  When this red earth gets wet it can get spongy.

By the time I put my tools away it was after 3:30 pm, and TLE was getting ready to ring the dinner bell.  Getting that pad prepared by the end of the day was a very big deal, but I was also very tired. Digging all those rocks out of the earth, and then raking the new pad took a lot of energy.  By the time I changed out of my work clothes I was running on fumes....lol.

Thanks for stopping by!