The weather was uncharacteristically warm, Louisville reached 87 degrees on Sunday. There was a lot of sweating involved, although at night things cooled down to a comfortable level.
There weren't many leaves on the trees yet, but there were a lot of flowers and other signs of life. The bluebells beneath the tree house were in full bloom. We even found a few morel mushrooms a few feet from the tree house.
Kristen and I went for a big hike one day, we covered just under 3 miles, getting a little confused here and there, but generally ending up where we wanted to. Kristen wore her GPS, so we were able to see our route.
Barb and Jim came over one night, and we celebrated my birthday a bit early. I received many great gifts, including a chainsaw. I got to put it to use, along with the face shield I received at Christmas. I'm still a little sore from the two tanks of gas I went through, but I had a lot of fun in the process.
Mom and Dad had a zillion projects going on, all seemingly at once. The raft had a bit of tree damage, they were tilling up the garden, Dad was burning brush, Mom was unpacking and organizing, Dad was pointing Randy Jeffries toward re-wiring the shop, guests kept stopping by, etc. They did all this while helping us with our projects and keeping us fed. It was a bit chaotic, I'm impressed they can pull it off so easily.
Tommy dropped by one day to let us borrow the Mule for a bit, we had a lot of fun zipping around in it. We transferred a lot of gear that way, and got a load of firewood down to the tree house in it too. We did have to make a slight modification to Tommy's "No-Bama" bumper sticker though.
We did a bunch of work on the tree house, with a lot of help from Dad and Mom. We built a swinging boom arm to which we attached the block and tackle. We managed to get 4 or 5 loads up there using it, including the Jotul stove. Installation of the stove will have to wait for another trip, the boom arm construction and attachment took up the lions share of our time. I'll eventually update the tree house blog with the sordid details.
I unfortunately came down with a cold during the first couple of days of the trip. Everyone's telling me I have the swine flu, but it just feels like a cold to me. It made the trip back a bit uncomfortable, but we made it back without any complications. We're now nursing our scrapes and bruises, and the multitude of bug bites we incurred during the the trip.
Kristen brought home my favorite Indian food for my birthday dinner. I can usually eat the whole thing, but tonight I took the high road and put some in the fridge for tomorrow. My stomach will thank me later.
