The Drunken Bear

...for berries!  This might have been a cold summer, but the berry bushes have been covered in fruit.  We have been eating the wild huckleberries for quite some time...using them in pancakes and atop our bagels...as well as just picking them and popping the fruit into our mouths.  The small wild blackberries have also produced quite a crop and are very tasty.  Drop a few in your pancake batter and you have a sumptuous breakfast. A little cream cheese and wild huckleberries Notice the small size of the wild blackberries

People, including me, are always building these very neat and balanced rock sculptures on the beach (rocks) at the edge of the river in front of The Drunken Bear. Well, I had to do some balancing on these too...the table was not entirely flat.  I thought they looked kind of fun...especially when it is the $9.00 a foot Pan Abode logs.  We used some of these logs to form the base of the wood shed we are building.  These were left over pieces...and soon to be fire fodder, so I thought I would give them their last hooray!

It is amazing to me all the little details that have to be completed when working on a house that go totally unnoticed, but are necessary and take a long time to accomplish.  We can spend a whole weekend doing these little detailed items and if someone were to come by, they would not be able to tell that we worked at all...unless we pointed it out. A recent weekend was spent doing a few of these detailed projects. Just working on the windows involved various steps.  First, there was the flashing required around the windows to keep water from getting in. In this picture, the flashing is the silver material  surrounding the window. We ran out of the silver flashing and when we went to purchase more, we got a different material.  The second type of material was much easier to handle, but when we started to add the trim, we discovered that the new flashing was a little too wide and the material had to be cut after the trim was added.  And when yo...

All of these photos of clouds were taken from the banks of  The Drunken Bear over the 4th of July weekend this year.

Over the 4th of July weekend, our friends Bob Gove and Doug Fisher came up to join us at The Drunken Bear.  Our neighbor, Bob Sheldon had two other friends as house guests, Mike Caputi and Jim Mahan. We all got together around the campfire and shared stories and laughs. L to R:  Our neighbor and friend, Bob Sheldon,  with Jim Mahan and Doug Fisher twirling sparklers. Looking back at the cabin from the campfire.  The vine maple looks great with up-lighting and the strings of white Christmas lights help us stumble...I mean, walk back to the cabin in the dark. A roaring campfire keeps us all warm and toasty. In the daylight you can see the canopy over the  campfire pit is made up of some very tall trees. The canopy is made up of Western Red Cedar, Douglas Fir  (the largest trees in each picture), Vine Maples, and Hemlock The new growth on the hemlock is a nice lime green color.

Much has been happening at The Drunken Bear since the last posting. Our friends, Joe Radoslovich, Robert Wisdom and Mike U. came up to The Drunken Bear for a work weekend and we were happy to have them!  Joe and Mike tackled the tedious and back breaking job of installing the soffit on the south side of the cabin.  Robert was busy with a paint brush painting the east side door and all the cedar window trim boards.  Steve was working on the plumbing, getting ready for the plumbing inspection. By the time I got off work and drove to The Drunken Bear on Saturday, all the help had returned to the city and Steve and I proceeded to work more on the plumbing. We also tackled cleaning up the property a little more...cutting back the ferns, collecting all the fallen branches from winter, weeding, etc.  The dutch door Robert painted showing the color  that will also be used on the window and door trim. (These two pictures were taken while raining...hence th...