Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, October 14, 15, 16, 2014 Boonville CA.
Tuesday
Today finds me at my friends cabin near Boonville CA. We plan to take it easy as much as possible, but we do have a couple chores to complete. We want to open up an old trail I spotted that goes up into a spring area we also want to find and tap a spring in and it is supposed to shower some which is ok with us as the forest is very nice when it rains.
I parked my van here, not too far from his cabin, where I mostly sleep as we spent most of the time in his cabin.
Here’s Marty and his cabin cleaning up after he split some logs for the wood stove. That’s his van there which is very similar to my van.
Here is a picture of his camp in the forest, which is also taken from the spot were the road we will take to go up the hill to work on the trail and the spring.
About noon, we hopped in his van and drove up the hill to his new water tank. It had fallen off it’s perch, so we had to drain it, dig some dirt out for a new base and reset it. It’s just a 55 gallon plastic drum.
After we reset the water tank and several breaks, we drove up the hill to bear spring and checked it out. Not much water coming out of that spring right now, so we headed back down the hill to the new trail we wanted to clear, which was really just an old trail that no one had used for quite some time and just needed some tender loving care.
The trail goes right through here, where the brush is. Marty spotted that big pole looking log, which is actually a real nice redwood heart wood, which doesn’t decay easily. He’s got steps and some benches in the plans for some of it.
We cleared the trail and did a little digging on it too. This put us up to the spring area were we are looking around for some water seepage in this creek which has a bunch of brush in it.
I had been here before a couple weeks ago and had some spots that might work, which we checked out. Looking a little more, we found a spot that looked better and was in a better spot for digging a spring out. We dug that spot out and it looks good for some water.
We plan to go back up there tomorrow and put in the spring tap.
Wednesday
Today we decided to do more of the same. We wanted finish tapping the spring we have been investigating and mostly dug out yesterday. We got all our supplies together and drove Marty’s van up the hill to the new trail we’d been working on which goes up higher to the new spring which we call broken handle spring as I broke our Pollousky handle working on the spring yesterday while prying on a big rock.
The new trail helped a lot to get up to the spring as it is a very steep area.
We made it to the spring and I started doing the finishing touches on the new spring hole.
Here is the hole and the spring hardware I will put in the hole to collect the spring water
The spring tapping pipe laid in the hole which will now be packed with mud to dam the hole so the water will go down the pipe. The green strainer goes on top and then the wire filter. Next rock our put over that to provide cracks so the water can get to the drain.
A plastic sheet is put over the rocks and the whole things is covered in bigger rock as seen in this picture of the finished spring tap.
After completing that, we had another break and then worked on the trait a bit up there. By this time we were both pooped and worked our way back down the new trail to the van.
I chose to walk back down the road to the cabin along here.
When we got back to the cabin we had something to eat and a long nap was in order, until dinner time.
Things went well today and we got a lot accomplished.
Thursday
I woke up this morning to another nice day. This was my view out my van side doors. as I was waking up this morning.
I went over to Marty’s cabin and joined him for coffee. We sat around and eventually, his wife Patti came up, so we sat around some more.
This pileated woodpecker came by to get a drink from this water fountain Marty had put together. Our presence didn’t seem to bother it much. It’s a big bird and looks like it could defend itself against most things.
Marty decided he’d like to go up and measure the amount of water we were getting from each spring we’ve tapped, so we started out by walking up the hill where we tapped the spring yesterday.
On the way up the road, we stopped and measured the spring that comes down to our water tank from the Fern spring.
It took 38 seconds to fill a cup.
Next we continued on up the road some more and turned off at our new trail that goes up to the Broken handle spring we just tapped yesterday.
We went through this area to get to the spring. Here is Marty with the measuring cup.
Marty put the cup under the hose water and I looked at my watch to see how many seconds it took to fill up the cup.
Broken handle spring was just a hair better than the fern spring at 34 seconds to fill the cup.
After doing that and taking a break or two we decided to see if there was a way to extend the new trail back to the cabin so we hiked over into that area, through here.
We’ll have to work on that some more, as we ran into some steep areas that we need to avoid.
I came out above the cabin and walked down the road to it.
When we got back to the cabin we went out to measure the cabin spring, where the wood pecker was. It was putting out the least of all the springs at 45 seconds to fill the cup. That’s ok as it just keeps flowing at this rate and doesn’t stop.
After that, we went into the cabin to try to figure out how much water we were getting per minute, but since we were a bit tired out from our walk, things just didn’t come out right, so we estimated we were getting about a third of a gallon a minute from the springs combined. Not a lot of water, but since we are in a drought and it’s the time of year when the springs flow the least, this is good. We have plenty of water to supply the cabin to do the things we need to do to live there.
I sat around for a bit getting rested up, and then headed on home for another nice day.
I had a nice time playing in the forest up in the Boonville area.