Mechanicals Done, Time to Rock

After three months of mechanical work and travails with brick and stone, the project is finally starting to move forward again. At this point, we're about one month behind the builder believes we can make up most of that time and still get in by December. That will give me our normal Christmas shutdown to get moved in and the old house ready to rent.

Electrical, plumbing and HVAC work is done, arches are framed and we're ready to finally sheetrock.

Here is a mockup of our first rock selection - didn't look anything like the pictures we'd seen, it was too wide to fit on the brick shelf and it took forever to get - other than that it was just fine. On the bright side, we still like our brick selection so we're halfway there at least.

It's tough to see with all the framing exposed, but the great room wood beams are installed. The chopped off ones in the background are framing the future stone fireplace. With all the money we saved with our initial stone selection, we added full stone fireplaces in both the great room and veranda and stayed within our budget. Unfortunately, the new stone that actually works and looks good was a bit more expensive, so our "free" stone fireplaces are no longer free.

Another shot of beamage with the ceiling can lights.

Our new stone arrives - looks a bit gray, doesn't it. Again, its impossible to pick this stuff from photos - you have to see it in person, washed and preferably on your house...

Yep, its too gray - need to add some different stones to bring in some color. Fortunately, this stuff has three distinct colors in different layers. This one is from the bottom layer. The middle layer is called Blue/Brown and it has more brown tones in it. The top layer is called Surface Moss and its much more brown and it has moss growing on most of it.

Insulation installed in about a day and a half. Can you imagine working with fiberglass insulation for ten hours a day when its 105 degrees outside?

Another pre-sheetrock pict looking up the stairs - enjoy the handrail, its about to be gone!

Fireplace units installed in both veranda and great room - all of the black metal will be covered by stone eventually.

Here's our mockup with a few of those more colorful stones laid on top - hope it works and we get the right mix! It is a bit of a pain to take down and start over...

Sheetrock arrives - piles all over the house...

Sheetrock going up - this is the barrel arch over the tub in the guest bedroom bath...

A tangent, but it appears there is a metallic serpent like creature living in our attic!

Chimney with spark arrester installed - decorative cover under construction.

This will be the access door to get to the pump servicing Debbie's air tub. Might also serve as an extra bedroom!

Tray ceiling in the master rocked and ready...

Great Room ceiling going up. Looks like they might need to find some taller guys to finish the top.

You can start to see the wood beams a bit better now that the sheetrock covers the rest of the framing. They are rough sawn and will be stained a pretty dark color.

Our more colorful stones arrive. The stone yard warned us not to install the really mossy rocks where the sprinkler will hit it as they are actually ALIVE and the chlorinated water will kill them!

Taping and bedding underway. I think they do at least three passes to smooth everything out.

Debbie's bathing throne with its barrel arch starts to take shape.

Taping and bedding is really bringing out the beautiful archways. This one is from the kitchen looking out onto the veranda.

Finally! Actual stone going up on the actual house. Once this is done and it looks great, I will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Who could know how stressful a pile of rocks could be?

One more shot looking up the stairway.

The Great Room beams exposed...

Another shot of the bathtub barrel arch...

They have started to put the beaded board on the ceiling over the veranda. I kind of liked the exposed insulation look, but oh well.

Final shots of the archways - this one looking from the Great Room toward the Dining Room.

This one from inside the Dining Room looking into the Foyer and Gallery.

This one looking from the Dining Room toward the Great Room.

Shot from the upstairs bedroom into the Courtyard. The brick has been delivered and distributed, but no brick on the house yet.

I have a feeling we won't see a handrail again until the stairs are in and the final rail is ready to install - wonder if I need to put a big mattress at the bottom just in case.

One final shot of the stone going up. The windows will have cast stone sills and headers. It will be interesting to watch them do the stone archway - I've never seen one in progress before.

Random Thoughts from the Trip

Some Fun Facts

• 1 million buffalo (OK, a bit of an exaggeration, but lots of buffalo)
• 8,705 miles
• 4,800 vertical feet of elevation gain (highest hike)
• 3,996 photos
• 38 days
• 31 tanks of gas
• 19 bags of ice
• 14 holes of golf (before it got dark)
• 13 campgrounds
• 13 states
• 10 national parks (if you count the two Canadiens)
• 3 grizzly bears
• 3 Best Buys (bought iPod transmitter in FW, traded it in OK, returned it in SD)
• 2 provinces
• 2 brake pads
• 1 bull moose
• 1 night of freezing temperatures (and rain)
• 1 failed attempt at backcountry camping
• 1/2 dome

A lot of people I met on the trip asked me what my favorite park was. It's impossible to sum them up and pick one, but I have tried to pick out the highlights from along the way.

• Most beautiful - Glacier National Park - so green, so much water, so many flowers
• Best hike - Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
• Best waterfall - Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park
• Best campground - Canyon, Yellowstone National Park
• Worst campground - Bridge Bay, Yellowstone or whatever its name was in Whistler
• Best single view - Lake Louise from the Fairmount Chateau, Banff National Park tied with Grand Canyon from anywhere on the South Kaibab trail
• Most accessible park - Yellowstone National Park
• Most expensive lemonade - Lake Louise, Plain of the Six Glaciers Teahouse, Banff National Park - bring your own water
• Most expensive gas - $3.75 a gallon in Banff (California is a close second)
• Least expensive gas - $2.07 a gallon in Tucson
• Prettiest drive - either the road from South Dakota to Yellowstone through Cody or the road from Jasper to Whistler - Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper and Sea to Sky from Whistler to Vancouver should have won here, but it was rainy and cloudy for both of them
• Fastest speed limit - 80mph in West Texas
• Best hotel - "The Springs", Banff
• Best meal - Bow River Grill, "The Springs", Banff
• Best salad - the wedge, Snake River Brewing Company, Jackson, WY
• Most expensive shower - $5 Curry Village, Yosemite
• Least expensive shower - $1.38 Glacier National Park
• Best beer - Pyramid Thunderhead IPA
• Most expensive beer - $9.75 at "The Springs"
• Biggest disappointment - Yosemite - picked the wrong time of year (little or no water), didn't have a camping reservation, fire cut off the valley, etc. I would go back, but earlier in the summer and not without a confirmed reservation.
• Worse fashion trend - young males piercing their ears and implanting progressively larger disks to stretch out their ear lobe. The California kid at a gas station with a dime sized disk was bad enough, but the kid at Phantom Ranch with a hole the size of a hockey puck was a bit much

Things that confused me.

• In Wyoming and Montana, nothing but round bales of hay. In Washington and Oregon, nothing but square bales of hay. Does Obama really think he can get a consensus on nationalizing health care if we can't even agree on something as simple as the optimum shape for a bale of hay? I think not. Instead, he should be focusing on the escalating cost of showers - from $1.38, to $2, to $3.25 to $5 at the end of the trip - shower inflation is the number one problem facing our country!
• Likewise, I counted at least six or seven different ways that states ban trucks from using their engines to brake - No Engine Braking, No Exhaust Braking, No Engine Retarder Braking, No Compression Braking, etc. Do we really need so many ways to say the same thing?
• Why does Oregon not allow self-serve gas? With pay at the pump, its kind of stupid to have to pay an attendent. Is the gas station attendants union really that powerful? The two teenaged girls that pumped my gas didn't appear to be hardcore union activists, but you never know.
• Canada spends millions on freeway overpasses - FOR WILDLIFE ONLY! All I could think of was putting a deer blind at one end of those things and thanking the Canadian government for bringing the wildlife straight to me. What happened to survival of the fittest? Its a necessary survival skill to be able to cross a freeway without getting run over. When will these entitlements end?
• Why do Europeans always order Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite when quality beer options are available? If anyone should know good from bad beer its them. Very disturbing.
• Germans I met were almost universally friendly and Brits I met were generally jerks. And the Germans spoke better english too. Go figure.
• Why don't Japanese people get english speakers to look at their tee-shirts before they buy them? INTERCOURSE Canning Co. is offered up as an example.
• How do you take a horse and a donkey and come up with a mule which is bigger than either one of its parents? No more GMOs unless of course they are carrying your dinner and trash! I'm putting all of my money into a new mule breeding venture I heard about - DOH!

Carlsbad Caverns

Friday, Sept 18 - Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

I didn't have a lot of time to spend at Carlsbad as I needed to be back in Austin Friday night to prepare for the UT football game on Saturday.

I did spend a couple of hours touring the Big Room, which is in fact quite big (six football fields big).

Took several pictures, but my skills with long exposures and low lighting are not that great yet. One thing that surprised me a bit was the lack of color of the formations, at least with the naked eye. Some of the colors do come out a bit more in the photos, but there in the cave, everything is pretty white and gray.

It's a bit awe-inspiring to think that these formations "grew" silently in the dark over tens of thousands of years.

After finishing the Big Room tour, got back into the car and headed east to Austin. About eight hours later, I was back in Texas, donning a UT shirt and headed out for some dinner on 6th Street. God Bless the USA and God Bless Texas! Amazing trip and experience.

Last Day at the Canyon

Tues, Sept 15 - Grand Canyon, Arizona


A shot from one of the Rim overlooks. After hiking into the canyon, the view from the rim looks less impressive - only two dimensional.










The now virtually unused Grand Canyon rail station. Back in the day, it brought virtually all visitors to the park. I saw an old poster that asked if "will you be one of the 25,000 people to visit the Grand Canyon this year?". Thanks to autos and highways, I think they might be exceeding that number a bit now.






The El Tovar hotel - it was the first large lodge at the canyon and was designed by the same person (Mary Colter) as designed Phantom Ranch.







Mule depot (right)











Back to the grind. After enjoying a steak dinner and breakfast at the bottom of the canyon and hiking out, I developed a greater appreciation for mules!






Back to break camp and head out. Who's there? about a dozen mule deer lazing around my campsite - did they help share the cost? No, they're deer.

Bob the mule deer (left) off by himself, guarding my tent for me.

Bob's close-up. I just sat there eating cheese and crackers and enjoying a farewell beer and Bob and I just stared at each other for about thirty minutes. Finally, I needed to break camp, so I had to approach him a bit too closely to take down my tent. Bob got offended by my proximity and stood up, walked exactly six feet away from me and plopped right back down. Offended? Yes. Ambitious? No.

Driving from the Grand Canyon back to Phoenix, drove through the Red Rocks of Sedona.

Enjoyed a couple of lazy days in Phoenix visiting family (Mom, Dad, two sisters) before heading back to Texas via Carlsbad Caverns.

Climbing out of the Grand Canyon

Monday, Sept 14 - Grand Canyon, Arizona

Up at 4:30am to get dressed and ready for 5am breakfast at Phantom Ranch, which was really good. While waiting for a bit of light, got this shot of a ringtail hiding in a hose closet.

At first light, walked about a half mile from Phantom Ranch down to the Colorado River - we'll be taking the silver bridge today to go up the Bright Angel trail.

Doesn't look too high!

Mule train coming out of Phantom Ranch with mail and trash.

Waterfall and creek along the trail.

First good rest stop at Indian Gardens.

I'll bet these people were the ones cheating off everyone else in school. Only consolation - I never saw a mule rider that really seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the hikers. At dinner the night before, one of the mule riders asked me how long it took to hike down and was surprised that it only took four hours - I think he thought the mules were the express train.

Looking back down at Indian Gardens - looks a bit like an oasis in the desert and it is.

The tunnel near the top of the Bright Angel trail. If you see this, you are virtually there. However, don't be surprised when you get to the earlier tunnel on this trail and think you are near the top - you're not.

Finally made it to the South Rim about 11:30am, so about five and a half hours to hike out - lots of short rest stops.

Back at the campsite enjoying a beer with cheese and crackers and a small herd of about eight or ten elk waltz right through my campsite as though I wasn't there.









Hiking the Grand Canyon was a pretty incredible experience. It is the single most spectacular feature that I saw on this trip and to see it in three dimensions was fantastic. From a hiking standpoint, it wasn't as grueling as I thought it was going to be. By comparison, the Half Dome hike of four days prior was by far the most difficult. I was still sore from that hike when I started down the Grand Canyon, yet the day after hiking out of the canyon, I wasn't hardly sore at all. Its also not very technically challenging - just a constant steady grind uphill, but it didn't have the killer steep steps that the Dome had. I think anyone in reasonably decent physical shape can take on the canyon - just make sure you leave at dawn, go slow, take short breaks and bring plenty of water. On the way up the Bright Angel trail, you can bring less water because there are numerous water stops along the way at Indian Gardens and the three and one mile rest houses.