Bert's Musings

It was cool here today, the high was 65, but it was a beautiful sunny day. This morning I spent 30-45 minutes on the splitter, splitting the rest of the wood we hauled to Tom's a couple of days ago. He had already split a lot of it. In the afternoon I spent more time getting my tools back in the tool boxes, and ready to go back into the RV. I then fired up my chainsaw and cut up a couple of tress on our property. The trees were dead. They weren't all that big, maybe 10-12" in diameter at the base. I move the wood a short distance to get it closer to where it can be loaded on a trailer. Stihl chainsaws are FANTASTIC. I had not started my chainsaw for approximately a year. It still had scummy old gas in it. I thought the carb would probably have to be removed and cleaned. I hit the primer bulb a few times, set the choke, and I think it was the 3rd pull when it fired and ran. AWESOME! I partially filled the gas tank after it started OK. Hopefully I will have time tomorrow to ...

Tom, Dennis, Jack and I split half a trailer load of wood this morning, into pieces small enough that we could carry them to the trailer, and burned the brush that was left from the tree. This afternoon I did some minor repair/maintenance on the RV and some more clean-up at the building. I also got a haircut and had my beard trimmed. Heather, a lady who lives less than 5 miles from us, has a SMALL barbershop. She cuts hair on Thursdays. She has no signs, you have to know where she lives and that she is a barber. It cost me $10 for a haircut and beard trim. The great part was that she actually shaves your neck. I love that and can't remember the last time a barber shaved my neck. She has been cutting Tom and Wendy's hair for quite some time. Last week she cut Mary Lou's for the first time. Had I known about her I would have went the first Thursday I was down here and went back again today, the last Thursday I will be here for awhile. I talked to David, at Deer Run Retreat, a...

Everything in the bathroom is hooked up and working. Actually the piece of cardboard for a door is a little tacky, but you can't have everything. Tomorrow afternoon I will turn the water off, drain the lines, blow them out and put antifreeze in the drains/traps. The walls are a pale yellow.  OK, so I was cheap and reused a white GFI outlet rather than buy a tan one to match the light switches. We didn't realize the end of the vanity plain plywood when we bought it. We might do something about that some day. The floor is still bare, unsealed concrete. We were going to at least seal it but just ran out of time.  In the morning I'm off with Tom in the morning to split wood. We still have 6 pieces in Crossville that we need to split by hand, to get them small enough so that two of us can lift them onto his trailer and haul them out out to his house and split them with the splitter. Friday we are scheduled to head to Deer Creek Retreat in Thompsons Station, TN. I am calling th...

Yesterday it rained on and off most of the day. Last night it was quite foggy, through this morning. Today was beautiful. Yesterday I turned on the water inside our building and filled the hot water heater. I found out that just test fitting CPVC joints is not enough, you actually have to glue them. I forgot to glue one of the hot water joints for the lavatory. It held until I turned the hot water on and off, in the tub, a couple of times. Then WHAM and I had a 1/2" line spewing water into the future kitchen area. A lot of water can come out a line that size while a person gets the supply shut off. Today I turned it back on and so far everything looks good. I actually ran some hot water into the tub. We put two coats of primer on the drywall today. The plan is to finish paint it tomorrow. After painting I can set the toilet and install the lavatory. Late this afternoon we drove into town, picked up our library cards (the library is awesome for a town this size), took some jpg file...

I guess it wasn't actually much of a hike but we did spend 3 hours doing a "walk-about" on our TN property. We took the "trail" (it is starting to get overgrown, not enough traffic) from the campground area down to the south end of our property. Not 50 yards from the RV the trail gets steep, with a lot of exposed rock. The rock was damp with wet leaves on some of it. Within our first 100 yards Kathy slipped and fell but fortunately all she got from it was bruises. Praise the Lord for that. We then walked across the south end of the property and, for the first time ever, I walked the 4000' west property line. Kathy took another trail that goes to Tom's shop. The terrain along the west property line was challenging at times. There were several ravines, at least 50' deep, where I looked for anything I could grab while going into and out of them. No rock climbing, but slippery wet/damp leaves and a steep slope. The GPS said we only walked 2.85 miles but ...

More rain isn't a bad thing, because the area still needs more rain, but I admit I'm getting a little tired of it. Yesterday morning was OK, even though the humidity was over 90%. In the afternoon I was finishing the electrical work for the bathroom when the rains hit. It rained quite hard two different times. I'm guessing but bet the total we received was less than 0.5". It has drizzled all during the evening and morning. I was supposed to go down to Tom's and help split the remainder of wood, the stuff that takes two guys to get on the splitter, this morning. Right now we are on hold. I have maybe a half days work to finish the plumbing on the bathroom and then we wait for Art to come finish the drywall. He is starting Monday but I'm guessing he will have to come back on Tuesday to finish it. We were going to move to Deer Run Camp in Tompson Station, TN (south of Nashville) next Wednesday but, because of waiting on the drywall finishing, we may delay that a d...

Nothing to exciting today. We went to church at Cumberland Fellowship again. If was a good service. The message was that a main goal of the church was to be a "family," especially for those who had no family to provide them with a support structure. We came home and had tacos with sweet corn for dessert. The sweet corn was left from that we bought yesterday. We put up the last two pieces of drywall for the bathroom this afternoon. Kathy also put a 2nd coat of paint on the front door. This evening we went down to Tom & Mary Lou's for supper, and to celebrate Morissa's birthday. Today's Chattanooga paper had an insert containing information on places to go in the area. Several places looked worth checking out. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

This morning we went to the Farmers Market first. We bought a dozen ears of sweet corn and had some for lunch, it was very good. Next stop was the Flea Market where we bought some tomatoes and peaches. Then we were off to Pioneer Days as the fairgrounds. All three of these places are on a two mile stretch of the same highway. Pioneer Days was interesting. There were quite a few people in mid 1800's apparel. The facing us, is Matthew, our new, young, insurance man. He had a bunch of rubber band rifles and was letting kids shoot at the target against the tree. Below are a couple of people in period dress. There were at least five, maybe six, stages around the fairgrounds with pretty much constant activity while we were there. Lots of different styles of music (nothing close to hard rock, thankfully). We think we just missed the cloggers at one of the stages. Of course no trip to town would be complete without a "parts trip" to the hardware store, for plumbing parts. While I...

We went to town this morning got our drivers licenses and registered to vote. The only thing that remains is for me to take an 8 hour handgun safety course so that I can transfer my IN concealed carry permit to TN. We picked up some more plumbing parts while in town but I didn't do anything this afternoon. Kathy went back to town with Wendy, Mary Lou and Donna (Wendy's friend). They shopped the thrift stores. Everyone came to the RV for beef stew for supper. Got my first Letter to the Editor printed in today's Crossville Chronicle. It was similar to my Sept 6th Political Commentary. I just can't understand why anyone thinks that we should give the government more of our money. One of the Indiana state representatives hit the nail on the head a few years ago, during a discussion about increasing the sales tax. He said, "If you send it we will spend it." That is exactly what will happen if we send more money to the Feds. It was pretty warm here today but is supp...

Today was another beautiful day. Highs were in the upper 70's and the lows last night were in the low 50's. There were a few clouds in the sky but it was mostly sunny. We went to Falls Creek Falls state park. It is only 30 miles from us.(  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_Creek_Falls_State_Park ) This weekend is the Mountaineer Folk Festival. We got there early, around 10 AM and that was good because the people were pouring in as we were leaving. There were a LOT of craft booths at the festival, some things interesting but most not so much. I did like the tee shirt on the Indian looking guy who was selling some type of woodwind instruments. Actually I didn't see it but Kathy told me it read something like, "Wonder if the government lies, ask an Indian." Some things that caught my eye, and wallet, was the people deep frying pork rinds for cracklins. I can just feel the grease clogging my arteries from all that I eaten so far, and I still have a b...

What a great day today. We had sun. Temps were wonderful, high 72 and low this morning of 57. We just walked back up the hill from Tom's, to our RV, in the moonlight. Les and Tom helped me put up the big sheet of drywall on our bathroom ceiling this morning. I then did plumbing the remainder of the morning. I am REALLY slow at this. I so seldom do this that I have to think, and think, and think, about everything; hoping not to screw something up. After lunch I helped Tom & Les unload the wood from Tom's trailer and split it. We also dug a few potatoes for supper. There were 15-20 people at Tom & Mary Lou's for supper. Leanne, Wendy's daughter, was able to come over from Cookeville, where she is attending college, and that was great because I got to see her. Tomorrow we plan on going to the Mountaineer Folk Festival at Fall Creek Falls state park in Pikeville. We have never been to the park so it will give us a chance to look it over and check out the festival. I...

Actually it is only drizzling on and off today. According to Tom's rain gauge we have received over 5" and according to Marvin's, about a mile away, we have received over 6". This morning I was sitting at the table after breakfast and looked out the window. There were two turkeys walking down the driveway. I told Kathy to look and when we both walked to the front of the RV they must have heard or seen us. There were two more in front of the motorhome. By the time I got my camera out all but one of them had walked into the woods. Marvin helped finish framing the bathroom this morning. Now I have to get the gypsum board put up and the plumbing done.  Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

We just walked back to the RV from Tom & Mary Lou's, it is still raining. Not hard, more like a drizzle. We now have had over 5", here at Tom's, in the past 36 hours. Some places within 30 miles have had around 8". Just to give you an idea of how dry it has been his lake is still not up high enough to flow over the top of the spillway. Also, by now I though Laurel Creek (you cross it going back and forth to Crossville) would be a raging torrent. On here way back from Crossville around noon Kathy said there was no water even flowing in the creek. We did lose power during the middle of the night. It did not come back on until around 5 this afternoon. (Not a big deal since I needed to run the generator anyway, to "exercise" it.). The ground around here is actually soaking up most of this rain and turning mushy. I've been told there were some decent winds last night but I slept through them. I didn't even know the power was off until I got up and Kat...

In the month of August the area rec'd only 0.1" of rain. In the last 12 hours Chattanooga had received 5.5" and they have received over 8" in the past 24 hours. The rain is easing but if not forecast to stop until tomorrow afternoon. We haven't had that much at our place but we have probably had over 4-5" in the past 24 hours. Tom said we had received over 3" early this morning and it has rained all day. We haven't gone anywhere so we don't know what local creeks look like. We got all our "stuff" covered in plastic today. Marvin and I started work on the bathroom around noon. We quit around 4 PM. Below is a photo looking north, toward the road, it is the future kitchen area. On the left side of the photo is the bathroom. This photo is also taken looking north. The area on the left could be a future bedroom. We had thought that we would put in a 30x60 shower pan and put ceramic tiles on the walls, for a BIG shower stall. The one piece t...

It has been raining fairly steadily for nearly 7 hours. Not hard, just a nice gentle rain. We just watched the weather report on a Chattanooga. By Tuesday evening Pikeville, about 20 miles from us, is forecast to get 8" of rain. There are flash flood warnings out for the area. Since we are up at around elevation 2,000', and there are really no valley that would be prone to flooding near us, we don't have anything to worry about from the rain. We do have to cross Laurel Creek if we want to go to Crossville. It is dry now and normally is just a relatively small creek. The water would have to be over 20' deep to even get up to the road surface, probably possible, but not likely. We don't need to go to town anyway. We went to church at Lantana Grace Church this morning. It is less than 10 miles from us. There were about 50 in attendance. People were very friendly but we will try some place else next Sunday. One other time we attended a service at a church in Crossville...