Chapter 85...Paving Prep and Cool Trees

Off Grid...Chapter 85 8-10 Yay. Today is the first day of work for our paving crew. They have a lot of prep work before they can even start the paving. They have to tear up the majority of our old large gravel so they can make a more solid base for the pavement. Here is the side driveway scraped of our old gravel. Next they start working on the back parking area. Here they are digging out the dirt and gravel. It takes all day just to get the driveway and the back parking area scraped. Here is the driveway ready to go. They took all of the gravel that they scraped up and spread it along the rest of our driveway. They also added some extra gravel and dirt to our pond wall. After they left for the day, Mike and I went down to check out the pond wall. When we got there we saw a package at the gate. Woo hoo it must be our 2nd awning. We get the package and head back to the house. Here is Mike standing on the pond wall. We get back up to the house and open the awning. Oh no. They sent a different color. Well it looks like we will have to send it back and hopefully they will get it right the 3rd time around. Later on Mike, Niki, and I go for a walk. We took a break and sat on a knoll in front of our house watching the deer. While we were sitting there I heard a "whoosh" from behind. I turned around just in time to see 6 deer running by us about 5 feet away. It happened so fast. I think the deer were as startled as us. It was really cool. 8-11 The paving crew is back. Today they have to run trucks of gravel and pack it down before they can lay the asphalt. Our first load of gravel coming up the driveway. Dumping the gravel so the guys can spread it out. While we are waiting for the next load of gravel the workers start spreading and packing our walkway. One and a half hours later we get the second load of gravel. Oh this is going to be a long couple of weeks. They only have 1 driver today and it's a long way to the gravel pit. This is the load they dumped and spread in our parking area behind the house. That's all the gravel we got for today. One of the workers took the roller outside our gate and got it stuck. Why he went outside our gate and onto the grass is beyond me. All day he was backing it onto the walkway but not this last time. So that's all for today's work. It rained that night. Not good. 8-12 Five guys showed p this morning to get their roller out. Only problem is they didn't bring any chains, vehicles, or equipment. So of course it is Mike to the rescue. Here is Mike getting them unstuck with our tractor and our chains. It amazes me how unprepared some contractors are. How does anyone ever get work done when they don't have homeowner(or Jimmy's) help. Since it's another rainy day the contractors left. hopefully they will be back tomorrow to work. That afternoon Mike, Nike, and I went for another walk. This time I took my camera. First we spotted a deer but i couldn't get close enough for a good picture. Then we walked along the ridge line and up to the top. Niki was a little hot shot running ahead of us. All of a sudden she stopped dead in her tracks and came running back to us. As we kept walking we found out what spooked her. She stumbled across 2 turkeys fighting. The poor little pug. We made it onto the old logging road and down to the entrance to our property. On the path we found an awesome and unusual tree. The trunk of the tree comes out of the ground but instead of growing vertically it grew at a bend. At the top of the bend 2 trunks are growing straight up and that part of the tree isn't in the ground. I tried to take a couple of pictures but it isn't really clear. In this one, you can see the trunks are growing up and not attached to the ground at this point. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool. Lisa